


Trauma

by Eenselwig_98



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive John Winchester, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Bottom Dean Winchester, Child Abandonment, Depression, Drug Abuse, Emotionally Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Dean Winchester, I promise, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, John Winchester Being an Asshole, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Musician Dean Winchester, Not A Fix-It, Past Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, Physical Abuse, Protective Castiel (Supernatural), Sad endings are not my thing, Suicide Attempt, This Gets Really Dark, Top Castiel (Supernatural), Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Writer Castiel (Supernatural), You Have Been Warned, mentioned only - Freeform, really quick, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:20:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 46,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22189291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eenselwig_98/pseuds/Eenselwig_98
Summary: Dean Winchester, rising star in the music industry, holds secrets that he has fought to protect behind his well-fortified walls. But what could he possibly have to complain about right? He's successful, young, good looking and has a bright future in the showbiz world ahead of him, he should be grateful. He should be happy. Shouldn't he?Enter, Castiel Novak, one of the best writers for Rolling Stone Magazine who has been assigned to write an article about the young, new musician that has taken the world by storm. Forced to follow him around, and get a behind-the-scenes look of who the real Dean Winchester really is once the spotlight goes out, Castiel isn't remotely prepared to find, let alone become enamoured with what lies beyond the public image the singer plays up for his audience and fans.But will either of them be strong enough to face their demons and conquer their fears to find happiness in the arms of each other?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 102
Kudos: 167





	1. Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> I've been listening to NF's albums on a continuous loop for the past few months, and he's such a great artist. Each chapter is inspired or based on one of his songs, so I highly recommend you go and listen to each, they really do add that emotional feel I know I wouldn't ever be able to portray through words. 
> 
> Disclaimer: This fic deals with some pretty heavy topics, which I have a limited experience of, so please please do read the tags and you know yourself best, so read at your own discretion.  
> Song: 'Interlude' by NF  
> \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_My most considered, like, "successful" moment of my life was the worst._

_The most depressed I've ever been._

_Literally feeling like I'd probably be happier if I was just dead._

_-NF, Interlude (The Search)_

“Dean, hey, I'm sorry man, but you gotta get up,” Sam whispered as he shook a sleeping Dean awake.

Opening his eyes at the quiet words and the shaking to his shoulder, which slowly brought him out of the deep sleep he was in, Dean groggily pushed himself up, rubbing the palm of his hand against his sleep-swollen eyes.

“How long've I been sleepin',” Dean's words slurred out of his mouth as the dredges of sleep tried to pull him back under.

Looking at his watch, Sam, his personal assistant, grimaced at the time, as he reluctantly answered, “About forty minutes. Sorry, but they need you for a final session, one of the sound guys messed up one of the tracks, so they want to re-do it all.”

“It's okay, tell 'em I'll be there in a sec.”

“You got it. They're in Studio 3, waiting for you,” Sam said, as he got up preparing to head back out, but not before he was stopped by the sound of Dean asking, “My dad there too?”

Turning back around, he looked on at Dean's hunched in shoulders, his head titled down and hands grabbing hold of the edges of his mattress. And Sam could understand why he looked so tense. Recording sessions with his dad in the booth always made him more nervous, more on edge than he normally would be if it were just the regular crew working with him. But John expected his son to be perfect, and if he wasn't, or if he found the tiniest imperfection in his vocals, it only meant longer sessions and sleepless nights for the singer until the man was finally satisfied.

Lord knew nobody dared question John Winchester when it came to his son. The guy had ruined more than one person's career when they dared to do just that, either directly or by trying to sell their stories to reporters who were all starving for anything they could get when it came to twenty-two year old star-singer Dean Winchester. John only ever allowed news of his son's life to leak that he deemed would fit his image or add to his stardom, nothing more, nothing less.

“Yeah, he's there. They were just going to do the one track over, but he wanted to do them all instead.”

Sighing, Dean nodded his head, mentally preparing himself for what would probably be another few hours in the recording studio as he followed Sam after he put on some clothes.

After his dad had managed to get the record label he was with to agree to a contract that included a world tour when his new album dropped at the end of the year, they had been on the go and working non-stop for the past few months.

Dean hadn't been part of that conversation, not that he ever was when it came to contracts he would take on. His dad had been his manager ever since he was thrown into the industry at thirteen, and now at twenty-two, little in the decisions that were made regarding his future had changed. But considering that his career had taken off before he could even comprehend the accomplishments he made, managing to have a multitude of his songs hit gold and platinum, having numerous albums of the year and to top it all off, at the age of nineteen he had even managed to nab himself a Grammy, Dean figured regardless of that fact, he was still basically living his dream right?

He should be happy right now, he _was_ happy. He was.

It was the same old mantra that he played on repeat in his head, which, if he were honest sounded more like a broken record by now than the encouraging words they were meant to be. But he couldn't let himself spiral down the rabbit hole like he did the night his dad broke the news of extending his contract so soon after he had just finished coming back from a tour that had already sapped every last bit of energy he had.

What was supposed to be one of the best nights of his life had, in a matter of minutes, morphed into one of the worst. He remembered feeling that rush of excitement for his accomplishment, that he would actually be one of the few to get to live out what had always been a childhood dream of his ever since he started out singing, but that feeling had soon been trampled by a rush of fear and anxiety, feelings he became all too familiar with over the years, and ones he learnt well how to mask.

But this was one of those rare occasions where those feelings felt too big for him to carry let alone hide, with the weight of them sitting on his chest, right at the surface ready to explode right there and then. Dean knew if he didn't get out of that room, which was filled with all their usual crew members with John having planned a party in celebration of their success, he would make an utter embarrassment of himself, but it was more the thought of embarrassing himself in front of John that made his feet cooperate and move until he was making his way to his bedroom.

When he got there, Dean had slammed the door shut, his heart beating a mile a minute as he leaned against the wood, hand clutched tight to his chest as his breaths came out in harsh, unrelenting pants. It seemed as if he couldn't get a hold of the tide of emotions barrelling straight through him, crippling him as he couldn't hold back the tears of pain that started to fall down his face and subconsciously his legs dragged him towards the warm light of his open bathroom door.

Dean couldn't really remember what happened after that, all that his memory could summon up of that incident was the vague image of Sam's wide hazel eyes looking down at him in absolute horror at the same time as he felt a burning, warm sensation running across his forearms. Sometimes, the fact that he couldn't remember any of it; having no recollection of getting out the razor he kept in his cabinet, of not sitting down on the cold tiled floor of the bathroom, not even of running the smooth, sharp metal across his wrists so many times that he had unintentionally made huge gashes in his skin to the point where he had been bleeding out right there, that realization that he had let his anxiety and panic take such total control over his body, this was what scared him the most.

Dean had felt so small and insignificant then, looking at John when he had finally woken up in the hospital, his father's face the perfect mask of pure concern in front of the nurse who had been there to check up on him. But Dean knew better than to be fooled by that, because the moment she had left, his dad never hesitated in letting out hushed, scathing words at his son and Dean would forever remember how ashamed he felt, lying there, the burn in his forearms a taunt as to how weak and selfish he had been, the words carrying a faint echo of what John had been saying to him.

Somehow, John had gotten him out of staying the prerequisite thirty days before the hospital was allowed to discharge him, and Dean never questioned where the refill of anxiety meds came from everytime the bottle was restocked with pills at the end of each week. They helped, most times, and that was all that mattered, to both him and his dad. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew they wouldn't hold up for long, and one day they wouldn't help him at all, and every time that thought popped in his head, two extra pills found their way in his palm as he moved his shaking hands to his mouth, dry swallowing them and cheating himself into believing he was wrong.

**

“Okay, I think we've got it, good job Dean,” Rob, one of the sound guys at the studio had stated through the microphone, and the moment the words registered, Dean felt his body instantly sagging in exhaustion. He had only had a few minutes' of sleep here and there for the past forty-eight hours, and he was just about ready to crash.

John's presence in the studio had only made for a more tense and on-edge atmosphere, and it wasn't just Dean who felt that way. The moment his dad had stepped out to take a call, him, Rob, the music producer and Steve, the sound engineer, had been much more relaxed and they got through the rest of the takes in no time.

Just as Rob made that announcement, John stepped back in, and Dean felt another pang of nerves wash over him when instead of collecting his own things from the sound room where he had been monitoring the recordings, he made his way over and stepped into the booth with Dean.

Wanting this night to just be over already, Dean took off his headphones and cut right to the chase as he said, “Who was that?”

Leaning back on the side of the piano, which was in the booth, not that they really needed it most of the time, Dean's brand was all about following the latest pop tracks that hit the market, but he did like playing it when he was alone. John placed his hands in his pockets, looking as casual as anyone could in the starched suite he was still wearing at this hour, and in a similar fashion as Dean, John got straight to the point as he explained, “I just got off the phone with the editor in chief of _Rolling Stone,_ and they want to do a piece on you.”

The surprised look he knew was on his face wasn't that hard to fake, he never even knew John had been in contact with them, “That's great. When's the interview then?” Dean made a point to know about any interviews he had lined up, one thing Sam knew he was rather anal about.

Being caught off guard was one thing Dean hated the most, especially when he tried his best to keep himself guarded from the prying eyes of millions of people, which he wasn't always successful at, people could be relentless when it came to things that made money, and it just so happened that his private life was one of those things up for grabs.

“That's just the thing, I tried negotiating a once-off, two hour interview tops, but they won't run a story if that's the condition,” John said, sounding miffed that he actually failed at negotiating on his terms this time around.

“O-kay, so what do they want then?” Dean was slightly confused, wasn't that how the whole 'get to know you' life stories of people like him went? He knew if it was _Rolling Stone,_ he probably could expect them to want more and for them to dive a little deeper than what was already out there about him, and that was fine, as long as he could be in control of what they saw, what he showed of himself, everything would be fine.

“They're sending one of their best writers down here, name's Casteel? or something like that. He'll be following you around for a while, maybe a few weeks or so, see what your life's like behind the scenes or some fancy shit like that.”

“W-what? Come on dad, you said no right?” Dean felt his heart start to race, a tell tale sign of an on-coming panic attack, but fuck if he was going to have one in front of his dad. Instead, Dean focused all his attention on the slight pain of his fingernails digging into his palm, it was the only thing he could do not to blow up in front of John at that moment.

Scoffing as he straightened up, John replied, “'Course I didn't say no, don't be fucking stupid Dean, this is _Rolling Stone_ we're talking about, just the publicity we need after your tour is set to hit next week, there's still a few concerts that aren't sold out yet. ”

Walking slowly until he was inches away from his son, John stared him down and Dean could pretend all he wanted, but John saw the panic lurking there behind his wide, glassy green eyes, and he didn't like that look one bit. It reminded him of just how fucking fragile the boy was and if there was one thing he despised, it was weakness, especially coming from his own flesh and blood.

“Now, you listen here, this is how things are gonna go, son. You're gonna send some smiles this writer's way, say what he wants to hear, let him get a little close to you, see why all those girls...and boys fawn all over your pretty face. You do whatever you have to to get him to like you, you hear. You _will not_ embarrass me again, do you understand me boy?”

The words were said quietly, meant only for Dean's ears, and looking down at the ground Dean nodded his head as the knot in his stomach seemed to travel up his chest, making his throat clog with a burning sensation he knew would make his voice quiver if he so much as opened his mouth.

“Good. Now he'll be here the day after tomorrow, and we can arrange for him to stay in one of your spare rooms. We should make our guest feel as welcome as possible. I suggest you rest up until then, you look like shit.”

With those parting words, John turned around and made his way out the booth. Dean didn't know how long it took him, standing there as he struggled to get his breathing under control, making his lungs work as they should, before he finally made the long walk to his bedroom, where once he got there, he couldn't help but swallow back two more pills as he laid his head on his pillow, just waiting for the dark tendrils of sleep to wash over him and take him away from the nightmare that was his life.


	2. Mansion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, some of you have been asking if this will have a happy ending, and let me just say, I will never ever write anything that contributes to the cliche of LGBTQ relationships having sad endings, I've watched and read all I can take of this trope to know that I am completely over it, no matter how good the stories were, life is already too depressing for any form of sad endings to seep into my place of escape! 
> 
> I realized I definitely have to be in a certain frame of mind to write this story, so sorry if it'll be slow going!
> 
> Enjoy, and thanks to all those who have clicked on, kudos'd or commented on this fic ❤❤  
> \------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Insidious is blind inception_  
_What's reality with all these questions?_  
_Feels like I missed my alarm and slept in (slept in)_  
_Broken legs but I chase perfection_  
_These walls are my blank expression_  
_My mind is a home I'm trapped in_  
_And it's lonely inside this mansion._

_-NF, Mansion (Mansion)_

Dean couldn't breathe, a litany of _Oh, no, oh no's_ , and _please not now's_ the only words scrambling in his brain along with the sound of the blood he could hear pumping through his skull. He had been struggling to catch his breath for the last twenty minutes but to Dean it seemed like forever since his body felt the clean, easy intake of oxygen, instead of the rapid harshness of the only air that he could manage to get in his lungs like a man starving right now.

It was the first concert of his world tour, and it was decidedly not going well. Usually Dean had a better handle on his nerves when it came to his performances, but this was one of the biggest sold-out shows he had ever had, and the moment he heard the screams and shouts from the tens of thousands of people who filled the stadium seats from where he was backstage, the thought of going out there and becoming the sole focus of all that attention, having all those eyes watching and judging, hanging onto every word he said and seeing every action he made on the large mounted screens on either side of the stage made his brain short circuit, while simultaneously making his lungs feel as if they were collapsing in on themselves.

He had immediately booked it then, his booted feet racing to some place quiet where he could just hide and pretend as if he wouldn't eventually be forced to go up there no matter how he felt or how his body and mind protested the very idea. Dean knew he couldn't hide forever, and he was proved right once somebody started knocking rather loudly and incessantly on the closed, single stalled bathroom door he had tucked and locked himself away in.

“Dean, you need to get out here! The show was supposed to start thirty minutes ago!” Sam yelled, the urgent sound of his voice definitely not helping matters, but Dean knew he needed to get out there, cancelling the show because of one small panic attack wasn't and would never be an option.

But he couldn't very well go out on stage like this either, he would barely be able to hold the microphone straight with how badly he was shaking from the nerves jolting through his body, let alone be able to carry a note. He needed something to numb everything for a little while, just so he could get through this in one piece. This wasn't how he wanted to start off the next almost twelve months of his tour and his failure sent a wash of discouragement over him.

Just as he was thinking about how he could stabilise himself well enough to get out there, he heard the sound of something rolling on the tiled floor, and untucking his head from where it had been bent between his folded knees, he saw the familiar orange bottle sliding under the stall door, only to stop a few centimetres away from him, the white pills resting innocently inside the plastic container.

“Your dad gave them to me, said you might need them?” Sam's voice rang out from behind the door once more, tone questioning and unsure.

It was the best option he had, the pills tended to make him a little loopy and slow, a contrast he wasn't sure he liked any better than how chaotic and overwhelmed everything was when his anxiety got the better of him. But, at least with the chemicals of the pills floating around in his blood stream he could get a handle on himself enough to face all those people without feeling a single thing, and he supposed that was better than how he was currently faring.

Mind made up, Dean grabbed the bottle up off the floor, and stood up on shaky legs as he unlocked the stall door. Ignoring Sam as he walked out, Dean got one of the glasses that were sitting on the counter-top where everything from hand towels to body spray were stationed and filled it up with water. Unscrewing the bottle one-handed with practised ease, he dropped three of the little white buttons into his palm of the hand holding the glass.

Dean didn't hesitate as he ingested the pills, water helping him to swallow them down.

“Let's get this over with,” Dean said, after having placed the glass back on the counter as he turns around, heading out the bathroom door.

Once Dean opened the door, however, he was met with a barrage of people, all encircling him, with one person speaking over the other, as they surrounded and ushered the singer down the corridor. Nobody gave a single fuck as to ask him whether he was feeling okay, or asking what was wrong, not that Dean was expecting it though, he was just another part of their job he supposed, not somebody they should really care about beyond getting a pay check out of him.

A numbing sensation soon started to replace his anxiousness, nerves held in check by foreign chemicals invading and controlling his body. Dean could feel yhe familiar echo of that glass dome slamming down around him, trapping him inside his own mind as the sounds and stimuli of the things and people around him were filtered and pushed out.

Although not in a complete stupor, Dean was unaware enough of his surroundings not to have spotted the stranger in the tan, knee length trench coat, Castiel managing to get a glimpse of him as he walked by the older man, watching on as the singer stumbled along, seeming to be in a daze by the glossed over look in his eyes. His brow furrowed at the possibility of meeting yet another walking cliché of a doped-up singer who fell into the trap of joining the drug and alcohol scene of Hollywood.

He'd seen and written enough stories about celerities like the young man to know that he was certainly not keen on spending more time than he had to with him. Castiel's time spent with Dean Winchester would definitely not be a long-lived one, he'd make sure of it.

Castiel wondered why Naomi, _Rolling Stone's_ chief editor, ever put him on this case, following singers around wasn't exactly his forte after all. The writer could admit that while he excelled at writing detailed, biographical-type articles of his assigned cases, which always got commemorative feedback from readers, he hadn't been able to develop that deceptive aspect that seemed to be a key player in journalistic writing about celebrities.

He could never manage to pretend as if they were the world's gift from god when he interviewed them in person, while at the same time slandering their names and character in his writing when he poured out his exact thoughts about them, things he wouldn't say face-to-face. Castiel had absolutely no filter, it didn't matter if he was speaking to a regular Joe or the fucking pope, he still tended to say exactly what he was thinking.

It was enough of a problem that over the years Naomi had assigned him less and less of the younger pop stars since they tended to not know how to handle his direct attitude very well, with the first few times he was tasked to write an article on one or two of them ending in law suit threats against not only him but the magazine too if they ever published whatever article Castiel was going to write about them after he unintentionally managed to offend their character. Castiel found their actions to be rather dramatic, but he supposed that's what happened when they were surrounded by _yes men_ people.

And now he had to spend not simply a few hours, but a few fucking _weeks_ with someone just as spoiled and narcissistic as those brats, someone who probably wouldn't be able to handle the writer running his mouth at his lifestyle choices. But he also knew that he wasn't being very fair and should probably give the guy a chance too, although Castiel didn't have much hope that they would get along regardless.

He hadn't had much time to be alone with the singer, having only arrived yesterday. The only time Castiel really got to speak with him between then and now was when Dean's father, John, had made brief introductions.

John Winchester seemed like another headache all on his own, and if Dean was anything like the pompous ass, Castiel knew there would be no hope of them ever getting along. Even though he was here to get to know who 'The Dean Winchester' was, John seemed to have inserted himself as dutiful bullshitter in trying to sell his son's golden child image to the writer and it was aggravating as fuck.

Castiel tried to evade the man as much as possible, but that was hard when it seemed as if he were attached to his son's side, a constant shadow that watched over his every move. That in itself intrigued the writer, but he also supposed it could be played off as a protective parent just concerned about their child in the crazy world of showbiz Dean had been swept up in. But there was just something off about the way he interacted with and watched Dean that wrangled his senses and Castiel stored the information away for now.

Castiel sighed in resignation when he heard the first notes of one of Dean's songs start to play, and he resigned himself to a night spent inside his hotel room where all the official employees, including Dean himself, were staying until he finished up the two concerts he had scheduled in this city.

He had thought he could catch a moment alone with the singer during the day, following him around like a lost puppy (along with about fifteen other people), but to no avail. The writer would bet that Dean never even bothered to remember who he was, but he would just have to assert himself more in the next few days it would seem. He needed to get as much information on the singer in as short amount of time as possible since he was ready to go back to his own quiet life, which was so far removed from all this fast living that he absolutely hated.

**

“Thank god, that was the last of 'em right?” Dean asked Sam, slumping in exhaustion as the last of the people who had bought the backstage pass tickets had left the meet and greet room. Meeting his fans was always one of the highlights of his job, he could admit that it was awesome getting to interact with the people who liked his music, who appreciated his talent, and yeah he was just vain enough to admit that he enjoyed the praise and adoration his stardom garnered.

But with the effects of the anxiety meds only now wearing off, the numbing side effect still partially present, which made everything a bit foggy, was not an ideal situation to be in when he had to put on a smile and be coherent enough to carry on conversations while talking to people. Dean managed to pull through though, and he was very much ready to just head on over to his hotel room and conk out for the rest of the night.

“Yeah. We're all done for the day, so we can head back as soon as crowd-control gives us the all-clear to leave,” Sam responded, looking over their schedule for tomorrow as he suddenly remebered what John had told him, “Oh, I almost forgot, your dad wants to see you in your dressing room before we leave, said he wanted to talk to you about something. So you can go on back there, and I'll come get you when security calls, yeah?”

Not bothering to argue, Dean simply nodded his head as he makes his way out of the room, heading down the white-washed hallway to where his own dressing room had been set-up. Dean had become pretty accustomed to their little 'private' discussions to know what to expect by now, and he knew he was probably going to be reminded about that guy Cas (or something like that) being here.

Dean could admit he was trying to avoid the guy like he was the fucking plague. Even though he knew he couldn't dodge interacting with him completely, he could bloody well try to keep it at a minimum, he had enough shit to deal with right now as it were.

It didn't help that the dude seemed kinda intense and serious looking whenever Dean managed to get a glimpse of him before redirecting to take another route instead. That seemingly perpetual look he sported just made him nervous, but it was strange since Dean didn't think those jittery feelings he got when he saw the man was from his anxiety going haywire on him, it was more anticipatory feeling than the lung-collapsing experience that usually preceded a panic attack. But that thought still didn't stop the singer from lessening his attempts of evasion.

He finally got to the dressing room he had been allocated and rapped on the black painted wooden door with two of his knuckles before he heard the muffled sound of his dad's voice calling out, “Come in.”

Not hesitating, Dean stepped into the dimly lit room, closing the door behind him as he did so.

Turning to face John, he saw the man seated on the velvet couch set up against one of the exposed brick walls, lounging there in his grey three-piece suit with a lit cigar stuck between his lips like he was a member of the fucking Mafia. Out of the two of them, his dad was definitely more of the showman than he was.

“You wanted to speak with me?” Dean questioned just as his dad stood up in one fluid motion from the couch and walked over to his son.

Dean hadn't for a moment expected John to deliver the resounding backhanded slap to his cheek that he did, and it surprised him so much so that it actually took him a minute to process the burning, stinging sensation radiating from the side of his face up to just under his eye.

When it finally registered, he cupped his cheek subconsciously in the palm of his own gentle hand, hoping the pressure would ease some of the pain that started to blossom there as he turned his head back to the front, looking up at John with wide, scared green eyes.

“I think I've let you carry on with this bullshit long enough, what the fuck is wrong with you? How dare you run off and lock yourself up in the fucking bathroom like a damn pussy, do you know how crazy the press are going on right now? Fucking stories everywhere 'bout how unprofessional you are, making people wait over forty minutes, before you decide to get your sorry ass on that stage. Half of 'em are even speculatin' that you'd been doped up and drunk off your ass during the entire fucking concert! ”

John's words were angry and scathing as he stood right up in front of Dean's face, looking down at his son, the scared look in his eyes making his temper rise even more with how truly pathetic he looked right then. Like a cowering dog too scared to face its own shadow, John would never know where he got this behaviour from, because he certainly taught his son to be better than that.

“I-I-I'm sorry, d-dad, I j-just...I didn't m-mean to...” Dean tried to stammer out, words refusing to come as the back of his eyes started stinging from the tears he held in check as he just stood there, limbs locked up and rooting him to the spot as he looked down at the grey concrete floor.

“Oh, shut up. You never _mean to_ do the things you do any time you want attention and sympathy, but this better not happen again, I'm warning you, Dean. What you do affects my image as your manager and you will not make me look as bad as you did tonight. Now, I'm going to go clean up this mess you made, and you better get your act together before you leave this room, I don't need any more drama from you tonight.”

Dean didn't move from his spot until the door closed with a bang behind John, the noise causing him to jump slightly. Not wanting to upset his dad even more, Dean walked over to his dressing table, slumping in the chair there as he started rooting around in the various make-up bags for some coverage. Looking up into the mirror once he found some, Dean finally saw how red and raw his cheek looked against his fair skin, his red-rimmed eyes staring unseeingly back at him.

With shaking hands, Dean tried to open the small round disc of concealer, but the fucking thing wouldn't open, and soon his frustration mounted until he felt the tears he had been trying to hold back finally make their way down his cheeks, the poignant sting of the droplets falling down his bruised cheek only making the singer start to cry harder and louder. His shaking fingers still trying to pry the lid of the container open, looking at the thing through blurry eyes.

And as he sat there, alone in the dark dressing room, body shaking from the sobs that started to wrack his body, after having just met hundreds of people who had told him how much they loved him, Dean never felt more unloved and alone in his sorry excuse of a life he was living.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs that inspired this chapter:  
> Mansion by NF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF5QE3-ox4o  
> Breathe by NF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87c00G5NjO4


	3. Paralyzed

_I'm scared to live but I'm scared to die  
And if life is pain then I buried mine a long time ago  
But it's still alive  
And it's taking over me where am I?  
I wanna feel something, I'm numb inside  
But I don't feel nothing, I wonder why?_

_-NF, Paralyzed (Mansion)_

If there was one thing Dean hated the most about his job, it was the constant travelling. Moving from one place to the next on a weekly, sometimes daily basis had gotten old pretty quickly. He could admit, he had been excited at the prospect of going to different places, meeting new people and just exploring what the world had to offer at one point in his life, but the idea of it turned out to be more beautiful than the reality.

Sometimes, he just needed it all to stop, the cameras being zeroed in on him twenty-four seven, having the whole world watching his every move, just waiting for the new 'Golden Boy' of the industry to fuck up and have a scandal that would forever be out there in the public eye. If there was one thing he would always crave, it was the familiarity of a place he could go home to, a place he could escape from all this and just be himself and not the person he pretended he was, but he'd become so good at being Dean Winchester, Rising Star, that he often thinks he probably lost a part of himself along the way, a part of himself he couldn't remember, a part of himself he couldn't get back.

Sometimes he would wonder if this loss came from him having skipped the whole 'self-discovery' stage every teen was bound to go through, even if at the end they never found exactly who they were, at least they had a starting point by the end. He grew up in this industry, and he would forever be a product of what they created. He was always something other people wanted him to be, and for the longest time it never really bothered him, until it did.

Dean had once read an article about him from some journalist he honestly couldn't even remember speaking to. It was a mocking and humiliating thing to read, the fine print stating how he was just some pretty face without any talent, and how he would probably never be anything without his managing team as a crutch for his skeleton of a personality.

The singer had gotten good at ignoring all the slander that was thrown at him, but there was just something about that one fucking article that had struck a chord in him, that hit too close to home and reaffirmed the thoughts that had slowly started to grow traction over the years, repeating the question over and over; whether he would be anything, anybody without all the fame. Without John. That what if he was just another empty vessel taking up space and air he had no right stealing from someone who deserved it more than he did.

It was these thoughts, haunting him again that night in his hotel room that had Dean tossing and turning the entire evening, unable to sleep, even though the hotel boasted having luxury memory foam mattresses in all its rooms (as a kid, before he knew what memory foam actually was, he had liked the idea of having a mattress that remembered him, even once he was gone), which was one sure-fire way that could lead him to passing right the fuck out once his body hit the bed.

After another failed attempt at being unable to fall asleep, with his body jerking itself awake when the singer had almost managed to doze off for the fourth or fifth time, Dean rolled over to the other side of the bed only to sigh when he saw that the red digital display clock read 04:46. His schedule for the day was due to start at around six like it usually did, so he had some time to kill now that he decided to just give up on getting some actual sleep for the night.

Rubbing at his tired eyes, Dean got up and headed to the bathroom, but not before he called in to the hotel room service to bring him up some coffee, thanking all the powers that may be that this hotel's kitchen was open 'round the clock and went on over to the bathroom deciding a hot shower might help loosen up his tense muscles and wake him up a bit more.

On the days when the weather was good and Dean found that he couldn't sleep, either from the new-found insomnia that seemed to be creeping up on him lately, or when he just couldn't get his mind to rest from its constant over-thinking, he liked to go off on his own and find the highest point he could reach of whatever hotel he was in for the time, all in an effort to go and watch the sunrise or just be out in the open when the world sat between that peaceful space of being half awake and half asleep.

It was cliched as hell, but there was just something about knowing that no matter how bad his day was, at least he managed to make it through to another one. That for this short while, he knew he was strong enough to pull through and fought hard enough to see the dawn of another day. Although, after his last little stint, it didn't feel so much like an accomplishment than mere routine, but Dean learned to take any victory he could get and besides he liked the view all the same.

He never knew where the impulse to do this came from, only that he had a vague, barely there memory that maybe him and his mom had always sat and watched the sunrise together when he was little, but like most things that had to do with Mary, it was such a far-gone memory (if it was even a memory itself), that he couldn't be sure it wasn't his own mind supplying him with the cold, empty comfort the thought of it brought him.

**

Twenty minutes later, Dean found himself on the rooftop deck of the hotel after asking the waiter who brought his coffee what side of the building was the best to get a view of said sunrise. It was a little of a cheating move, asking the waiter, but Dean found even after his shower he was too tired to go wondering around like he usually would when he did this.

Dean was grateful when he noticed that nobody else was there at this hour, so he had the place to himself for a little while it seemed.

Walking on the soft, green, probably synthetic, grass, the singer could see that the square pool was definitely the main attraction of the space as it dominated the area, the water rolling in soft crests as the morning breeze swayed the calm, clear waters. There were also potted plants scattered around, the long leaves spilling over in their concrete fixtures with brown, woven hammocks and pool loungers just adding to the tropical aesthetic he knew they were aiming at. But besides the appreciative cursory glance Dean wasn't interested in the look of the place, he just wanted his view and when he saw that there were a few benches along the outskirts, which faced away from the pool toward the outside his feet seemed to automatically carry him to one of those benches.

Taking a seat, Dean let out a weary, yet contented sigh as he relaxed his compact body on the cushioned bench, pulling the over-sized black hoodie he had on over his folded up knees. He looked over at the horizon where the sun still hid behind the mountain, except for the first few rays that peeked over the range, dusting the cloudy blue sky in streaks of oranges and pinks. As far as views went, this one was pretty good, he could admit.

There was a strange calmness that always settled over him when he was alone like this, just him and the endless world ahead of him, and it was times like this when he thought that maybe, if he got to see this again, his life could be worth living.

It was while he was lost to the thoughts in his own head that the singer startles when hears somebody clearing their throats from the other side of the bench next to his. Looking over, Dean's surprised when he sees it's that writer dude, Cas or something, sitting there, watching him with those deep blue eyes of his that had Dean fumbling with his words when they were first introduced.

His body automatically scrambles itself to sit more upright, with Dean clearing his throat as he says, “Oh, sorry. Didn't know anybody would be here, I-I'll just, uh, go?” He didn't exactly mean for that to come out as a question, but all the same his moment of solitude had been disrupted and he fully expected to leave. And really it was too damn early for any form of interview related conversation if the writer wanted to hop on the opportunity in finding a rare moment of Dean being alone. But he still can't quite hide the disappointment marring his features when he looks back over the city and realizes he wouldn't be able to see the view of the sun cresting over the mountain range after all.

But before he can get up, he sees the older man shaking his head as he turns around and looks ahead at the lighter shades of blue and orange and yellow now brushing the sky, “I don't exactly have monopoly of this space, if anything I should be asking if you want me to go, you seem to have a penchant for not wanting to be around me,” he says with a quirk of one dark eyebrow.

There's a challenging under-tone there with his last statement that makes the singer blush slightly, realizing that he must've not been as discreet as he thought he was being whenever he tried to get out of the same room as Cas or making up whatever bullshit excuse he needed to get out of speaking with the man. His evasiveness probably never made his job any easier to do, Dean could admit, still that didn't mean he wanted to be interrogated at the fucking ass-crack of dawn regardless.

“Don't worry, we don't have to play the whole you avoiding me and me pretending not to notice game just yet, I'm not on the job 'til seven,” Cas says when Dean takes too long to make up his mind with what to do, his body hovering over the bench, with the singer not knowing if he wanted to stay or just go back to his room.

But the fucker just takes a seat with a smirk on his face, calling Dean right out on his admittedly shitty job of his attempted discrete evasive manoeuvres, “I'll just stay then, I guess,” Dean replies in return, finally relaxing back in his seat, not wanting to seem like a total asshole by running off yet again.

The silence stretches out between the two of them, Dean not being able to help himself when he keeps sneaking glances at the man sitting silently beside him, looking as if he had no intention of breaking his vow in not asking Dean questions once his guard was down. It's unsettling for the singer, with Cas not taking advantage of the situation since this would probably be one of the only times they'd be alone together by accident.

Dean can't help himself when he finally breaks the not exactly awkward, but not exactly comfortable silence either, between the two of them when he blurts out, “So, why're you up here, it's pretty early.”

Cas turns to him with a raised eyebrow pointed his way at Dean's attempt to have an actual conversation with him, “I could ask you the same question,” he says right back.

“Touché. But I, uh, I just kinda like watching the sunrise, is all. Your turn,” Dean didn't really know what he was doing or why he wanted to know why Cas was up here so badly, but he figured it was just a bout of curiosity, or the chance to actually have a normal conversation with someone without anybody else being around to witness his awful conversational skills. Maybe a bit of both, he guessed.

But then blue eyes turns on him, Cas's gaze intense and guarded as he says in a monotone voice, “I wasn't under the impression we were actually going to speak to each other.”

**

Castiel always felt like there was a coldness inside of him that just seemed to block off and blanket all his emotions, creating the cool, distant exterior that came out in the flat sound of his tone and calm and stony visage of his features, which often left people with the impression of someone uncaring and at times unapproachable. Strangely, he found a way to use this to his advantage when it came to working with the type of people his job required him to constantly be around, since most of the time he was commemorated on his ability to stay professional.

But just because that worked for his professional life, it wasn't so great for his personal one, with Castiel sometimes feeling that wall inside him freeze over without warrant, growing sharp, jagged edges that poked and prodded until he said the wrong thing, reacted the wrong way, and inevitably drove people off.

Like what he was doing right now.

In a distant sort of way, Castiel knew he was being rude and a complete jerk the moment the words were out of his mouth, but it was too late to filter them out first. And it didn't help matters when he saw out of the corner of his eye how Dean started to bite his lip, a pinched expression forming on his face as he turned his body away from the writer, from where only moments ago it had subconsciously drifted until Dean was facing him more fully.

Castiel closed his own eyes, grimacing at his words when he played them back in his mind. He had been on edge all week, getting nowhere slowly, and knowing he would be forced to shadow Dean much longer than he thought he would need to. But the singer refused to give him the time of day, and there was only so much rebuffing and rejection one could take before the feelings of being a complete outsider and a nuisance was made pretty clear.

All Castiel wanted to do was to go home, back to his quiet apartment, back to the semblance of normalcy he had carved out for himself over the years. But no, now he was here, in a place where he had no one to talk to, no one who knew him, having no place amongst the hustle and bustle of Dean's team and garnering the distinct impression that he was not wanted here, seen as a slimy, opportunistic intruder who wanted to root out and expose every little detail he could get his hands on.

But all this was no excuse, he knew, and the last thing he should be doing was taking his frustrations out on not only someone who he hoped would be more open to the idea of speaking to him in a different, more professional setting, but someone who was probably the first person that he could remember who didn't seem to pick up on or be put off by his seeming indifference as the singer willingly started a conversation with him. Either Dean Winchester was even more oblivious to social cues than he was, or he was someone more interesting than Castiel first thought.

Lost in his musing and trying to find a way to smooth things over, the writer almost missed the soft spoken voice of the singer beside him saying, “Just try'na make conversation, is all.”

He said this while shifting about uncomfortably, lifting his legs up onto the bench so he could wrap his arms around his knees once again, looking back at the view spread out before him, and Castiel's own gaze shifted, noting that the sun had started to make its slow ascension into the sky.

Taking a deep breath in, Castiel says the first thing that comes to mind, “I apologise, that was rude and uncalled for of me to say.” Really, it was the only thing he could do at this point, and he had no qualms admitting to his shitty behaviour when warranted.

Castiel was surprised to see Dean looking slightly taken aback in what seemed to be his own disbelief, the singer stumbling out the question,“You-you're actually apologising to me?”

Castiel scrunches his face up, confused by the question and shaking his head with a barely there smile as he responds with a shrug, “I'm sure you're quite familiar with those, being Dean Winchester and all that, people must fall all over themselves for you.” Castiel was careful not to use the same tone he had earlier, not wanting to be condescending, just stating what must at this point be a universal fact.

But once again, the singer's reply surprised him as he gives his own version of Castiel's smile, but to Castiel, it looked a little sadder, a little fragile and a little too forced, his next words being anything less than the truth when he says with a huff of a laugh that wasn't really a laugh, “No, not really.”

The words were simple, said out in the open like that, meant to be carried away on the slight breeze in the air, but to Castiel, the weight of these syllables strung together in that short sentence was something that seemed to have its own power. The words causing a visible shift he can see in his minds eye of the perception he had of who he thought this singer with the bright green eyes and dusty brown hair was. And he was even more surprised to find that the budding curiosity went beyond his professional vested interest in his story, but it was yet too soon and tentative to say exactly what he was feeling at that moment.

So as with everything else, the low level spark of whatever this was, was snuffed out by the coldness inside him, numbing the feelings until Castiel could barely register them as anything substantial enough to garner his attention. But even so, in another distant sort of way, they both knew that something shifted between them on that rooftop, an interest sparked by both, a curiosity to see beneath the surface, a low level heat swirling in each of their bodies that couldn't be quenched out so easily no matter how cold or frightened they each, respectively, were. 

And there they sat together in silence afterwards, side by side, but seemingly worlds apart, both watching the sun finally crest over the mountain, up, up into the now cloudless blue sky until the view became nothing but another day and they became Castiel Novak, _Rolling Stones_ Journalist and Dean Winchester, Golden Boy, Rising Star, once again.


	4. Let You Down

_...You don't wanna make this work  
You just wanna make this worse,  
Want me to listen to you  
But you don't ever hear my words  
You don't wanna know my hurt,  
Let me guess you want an apology, probably  
How can we keep going at a rate like this?  
We can't, so I guess I'ma have to leave_

_-NF, Let You Down (Perception)_

Dean often felt like he was living one massive, on-going masquerade, people wearing masks, and putting on a performance, constantly pretending to be someone else, and it scared him how much he was a part of the show too. He supposed, having been raised with John as his role model, he was bound to pick up a few tricks on how to build and weave together his own clay structure, but his father was a master when it came to playing pretend.

It was amazing how John could still catch Dean off guard sometimes. Like he was doing right now while they were in front of this small group of people, spinning words together to create an entertaining story, his best people pleasing mask firmly in place in this stranger's home, unlike the black, oil-slicked mask he wore in their own home.

Dean knew better than to think this was a purely social call on their part, there were always ulterior motives on the agenda as to when John randomly dragged him to these events, especially when Dean's schedule was so full. It was just the two of them there, three hours already having gone by with nothing of significance transpiring in the conversations during the times he bothered to tune back into, but Dean knew better.

As if to prove his point, the man with the slicked back blonde hair who had been eyeing Dean all evening, making him feel as if thousands of bugs were crawling all over his skin, and who slithered in and out of the circle of people John had been moving through, gave a decisive head nodding signal towards the staircase as he caught John's attention.

Dean dreaded having to go with to what he knew would be a more private meeting that would take place between the two, but he breathed a silent sigh of relief as John bent down whispering, “Stay here and play nice. I'll be back soon.”

John didn't bother waiting for a response from Dean as he handed his son his barely touched glass of whiskey, politely extricating himself from the group and with confident strides headed after the other man.

Taking a page from his dad's book, the singer turned back to the group and with a suave that came from years of practice, he put on his own version of John's charming and winning smile as he picked up the story right where John had left off and with an effortless ease he continued the fabricated father and son story his dad had been regaling to the appropriately captive group.

**

“I have excellent news Dean,” John says proudly, the satisfied look that he carried out with him after returning from his private business meeting still firmly settled into the contours of his facial muscles and skin. A look that Dean had seen many a time when John had gotten something he wanted. A look that never meant anything good for Dean.

They were each sitting on opposite sides of the black leather back seat of the limo they were driving in as they headed back to the hotel they were staying in for the week. The singer felt drained and bone tired, rubbing at his temple, already feeling the mounting stress and anxiety pounding against his skull, feelings he thought must be his natural, resting state at this point since they never were far behind in rearing their assault on his body.

“Does this have anything to do with that little meeting you had, then?” Dean asks wearily and somewhat cheekily as he states the obvious.

“That was anything but a _little_ meeting boy, show some respect for the work I do, you ungrateful brat,” John fires back, not liking Dean's tone one bit.

But seeing Dean automatically bowing his head down slightly in deference as he tries to move just that little further away from John as he presses his body more firmly against the door panel, settles him, that together with the already smug feeling he had before the boy opened his mouth has him not even bothering to reprimand him properly, so instead he continues, “I've been working on brokering a deal with Paul Gavins for the past few months now. He's a big wig producer and is working on an upcoming box office hit. Gave me a call around December, wanting to cast you as one of the leading roles. Some bullshit about music artists bringing in the ticket sales, which has fuck all to do with us, really. The point is, this is your next big break boy, and I managed to have them film around your schedule, which not a lot of managers can pull off might I add.”

John was prattling off, speaking as if this was already a sure thing, as if this was something marked in stone, something unavoidable, something that was non-negotiable, something Dean couldn't even first _consider_ before taking it on. The thought of it, having another big, life altering thing happening to him, without so much as a word of agreement or consent, sent him on a tail spin, feelings, thoughts, memories of that night flooding back from where Dean had carefully stored them away only to be pondered over when he was alone.

_This couldn't be happening, not again. Please, please, not again._

Of all the thoughts, all the logical arguments he could present to John as to why this wasn't a good idea, the only thing that manages to escape his slowly narrowing airway is, “John, don't make me do this, with the tour and recordings, and events. D-dad, please...it's too much.”

It was times like this Dean wished he was a stronger person, someone not full of nerves firing through his body that caused the now almost permanent trembling in his hands, someone not full of guilt and regret at his own ineptitude, someone not so scared to take control of his life and live it the way he wanted to, someone who wasn't so utterly, devastatingly afraid to stand up to John Winchester.

But his dad had groomed him to be his perfect little soldier and made sure his lessons stuck like sticky, slick black residue staining Dean's soul with its imprints. Lessons that refused to be ignored when Dean got ideas about his own sense of self-worth.

Even as he hears the plea in the words coming out his mouth, he could see by the look on John's face, his mouth slowly turning down in scorn and disappointment as if he could barely believe Dean was his own flesh and blood, he knew. He knew that there was nothing he could say, nothing he could do that would change what John had already decided for him. Nothing he could do that would lead to freedom from all of the things happening to him.

Nothing short of finishing off what he couldn't five months ago that is.

**

Castiel jolts as he's woken up by an incessant knocking sound on his dingy, single hotel room door. Being only a tag along on this tour definitely had its demerits since the journalist was relegated to occupying the sub-par rooms of the hotels they had settled at thus far. But it was only the early stages of said tour, so he remained hopeful that his living arrangements could go nowhere but up from here on out.

The soft knock comes again, the person on the other end definitely not wanting to be ignored. With a groan and a mumbled out, “ 'm coming,” Castiel pushes the blankets off of himself and gets up from the bed, fully intending to rebuff whoever was out there demanding his presence to do so at a more reasonable hour, since looking at his night stand clock he sees that it's fucking two am. _Jesus._ If there was one thing Castiel was not, it was a morning person, and this was really just pushing the boundaries of that personality trait and souring his mood.

“What the fuck do y-...” Castiel's words are cut short when he finally opens the door all the way, only to see that it's none other than Dean, in all his wide, green-eyed, golden haired glory, standing on the other side of _his_ room door, looking rightfully chastised and way too dressed up for this time of the morning.

“Uh, hi, Cas, can I come in?” Dean asks softly, unsurely, shifting from foot to foot right there in the brightness of the hallway, as he takes in Cas's off guard expression, still debating with himself if this was the right thing to do, but knowing he couldn't very well just walk on off to his own room once he had finally gotten Cas himself out of his own bed.

_He's cute when he's nervous._

The unbidden thought seems to stumble out in his head, so fleetingly, so unexpected that Castiel can't help the way his face contorts into a scowl, not so much aimed at Dean rather than at himself. But looking at how Dean turns his head slightly, eyes peeking down the hallway as if he were contemplating whether he should make his escape now rather than suffer through Castiel's gruff and grumpy attitude, Castiel knows Dean must have taken his presence as being very much an unwelcome one by the writer.

In lieu of a response, Castiel steps aside, leaving the door open as he heads back into the darkness of his room, moving to the bedside table to switch the lamp light on. The light sheds a warm, golden glow on the space, making their current predicament seem all the more intimate than what was probably appropriate. Then again, Dean knocking at his door at this hour, coupled with Castiel's current state of undress what with him wearing only his boxer shorts and all, which he only notices once he sees Dean averting his eyes, looking anywhere but at the writer, ensured that their exchange would be anything but professional in Castiel's opinion.

Either way, he was not about to have a conversation with the man in front of him in only the scrappy material of his boxers as he goes to grab a discarded white under-shirt, feeling a little too vulnerable and open to scrutiny from those green eyes, even as they remain fixed to a spot on the wall from where he has perched himself on one of the two chairs next to the lone desk in the room.

Castiel takes a seat on the other chair, but instead of hearing the explanation as to Dean's unexpected visit, the silence that had enveloped the room since the singer entered persists. Usually the writer's pretty good at waiting people out, not too bothered by the heavy tension that comes along with the deafening sound of nothingness, but something about the man in front of him puts him on edge, makes him feel off-kilter and slightly less indifferent than how he would react in a situation such as this. Not that anything like this has ever happened to him before. Maybe that's the problem then. It's the explanation Castiel goes with when he finds he's the one to break the silence as he says, “You look nice.”

The surprised expression on Dean's face as he looks at Castiel and then down at his own state of dress matches the writers own confused one. He never meant to say that, but there it is, the words hanging heavy between them, Castiel grasping at straws to cover the awkward statement but coming up empty as his own brain tries to rewire whatever the hell it was thinking, putting himself on the spot like that.

After their little interlude on the rooftop that happened about three days ago now, Dean hadn't tried to run away from him, but their interactions had been only the bland exchanges of two people who were unavoidable when finding themselves reluctantly orbiting the same spaces.

If he were honest, Castiel didn't know what to make of Dean. On the one hand he seemed to play the role of happy-go-lucky celebrity better than any other person Castiel had ever written about, his sincerity being so seamless that he wondered if there was really much of a story here to tell. But other times, when Castiel found himself lurking in the areas where it was only Dean and Sam in the same room, he got a peak of someone with rounded shoulders, down-casted eyes, bitten lips and wringing, trembling hands that made for clumsy actions.

Dean was an enigma, contradictions within contradictions, and Castiel couldn't deny that he wasn't already interested to see where this potential story could go, he just didn't know what to make of the thoughts that took a personal investment into the singer, thoughts that wanted to know the who's and whys and whats and hows of the man sitting in front of him beyond their use for the printed black inked words of a cover story.

One thing he did know with a palpable sort of certainty though, was that he wouldn't come out of this unscathed if Dean kept surprising him like he seemed to keep on doing at every opportunity they found themselves alone together like this.

**

_This was a mistake, what the hell am I doing here?!_

Not even bothering to go to his own room first, Dean had come straight to Cas's room after the party, his room actually being just down the hall from Dean's own.

Back when John had first told Dean about Cas, he had asked Sam to look into Cas, or more specifically his published articles with _Rolling Stones._ It was rare that Dean made requests from Sam, and he trusted his assistant to come back with all the information he needed on the writer who was going to be publishing an article on him and potentially be spending a lot of time asking Dean questions. He wanted to be prepared for whatever Cas would be throwing at him. Not that it helped when all Dean had done was scurry away from the man at the beginning.

Sam was good at his job, and even better with things that required research, and he had come back to Dean not two days later, unloading all he had dug out on the writer, being more than a little impressed with how Cas had humanised the people he had interviewed when he went through his work. He also presented Dean with feedback about Cas to the editor of _Rolling Stones_ , which Lord only knew how Sam had managed to gain access to, with top celebrities making personal requests to have Cas specifically take on the writing of their own scheduled articles.

Now, this proved to be exactly what Dean needed to know to make an informed decision with what he planned to do, but he wasn't going to get through any of what he prepared to say to Cas if the man kept making him so goddamned flustered, first from opening his door wearing nothing but blue boxer shorts with Dean trying his best to avoid staring at Cas's shirtless, unexpectedly muscle-defined torso, to making Dean flounder about with flat out compliment he gave Dean regarding his own state of appearance.

Dean didn't know what to do with Cas's compliment, not that he could help the warmth that spread across his face, but ultimately he decides to let it settle under a change of topic, not forgotten but not acknowledged either, since Cas looked slightly uncomfortable with the slip of words, and Dean says, “I've read some of the work you wrote, they're pretty good.”

It wasn't how he imagined starting this conversation but it was true enough, he had read the articles Sam sent him, and he reluctantly admitted that they were pretty good. Better than all the articles combined written about him and a lot of other public figures at least. Cas had a way of writing that was honest to the bone, words weaved together that praised without being pandering and genuine without being deceptive. It was the type of writing, the type of person, Dean hoped Cas would be with his own story.

“Thank you,” Cas says simply with a nod of his head as he looks at Dean, the singer having snagged all his attention by the tone of his voice. Cas didn't seem determined to go anywhere else with his statement, an underlying understanding between the two that Dean needed to just get out whatever it was that made him knock on the writers door at this hour.

Dean didn't think he could look directly at that penetrating gaze that was unashamedly locked onto his own, not when he was already as on edge as he was, so looking away he blurts out, “I was thinking about doing a biography, or well you doing a biography. On me, that is.” The words tumbled out stilted and inelegant, Dean unable to stop himself from wringing his hands together in an attempt to redirect his nerves from balling up in his throat, knowing they wouldn't stop until they clogged up his windpipe, chocking him and cutting off his air supply right there in the din of the room.

Cas wasn't saying anything, and Dean felt compelled to reassure him in case he was trying to find a way to reject Dean's request, “You can say no if you want to, I know you were only assigned to write a front page worthy article about me, and I might not be the most fascinating person, it was just an idea is all, and well, you're already here, so I thought might as well...”

His words are cut-off by the harshness of Cas's deep voice saying, “You thought you might as well use me for your own little project.”

“No more than you're using me,” Dean responds, meeting Cas's angry, insulted scowl with his own dejected smile that felt wobbly on his lips.

This wasn't going the way he planned it would, as he _hoped_ it would, everything was coming out all wrong, and he could see Cas wasn't overly thrilled with the idea, not that he had any reason to be really. Dean was just another client to him in the grand scheme of things, and he certainly didn't owe the singer any favours. But Dean had a feeling that he wouldn't be able to do this with anybody else but Cas, there was something about the writer's sharp edges that put him at ease, as strange as that sounded. Cas was as straightforward and as unapologetic about it as they came, and he desperately needed somebody who wouldn't feel sorry for him and who wouldn't go selling the secret parts of himself to the first highest tabloid bidder. He wasn't offering Cas a scoop here, he was giving him all the broken parts of his soul, hoping he'd know what to do with all the scraggly pieces once they were through.

“Why?” Cas asks suddenly, filling up the contemplative silence that had grown between the two.

Dean scrunches up his nose in confusion, not knowing what Cas meant exactly, “Why _you_ , do you mean?”

Cas shakes his head at Dean's guess and states in plainer terms, “No, why do you want to do this, Dean.”

Dean's taken aback by the question, it was a logical one to ask he supposed, but he hadn't anticipated to be asked this question, rather preparing whole spiels about how he would reimburse Cas ten times what he was getting right now and that Cas would be getting whatever royalties it would make if it went through publication or whatever, and how it could be good for Cas's career, and a whole plethora of incentives as to why Cas should agree to take this on. He wasn't expecting the writer to ask what his own motives were.

Then a realization came to Dean, this was his first test with whether or not he could be open and honest with Cas, things that he needed to be with someone he was entrusting to do this job.

Taking a deep breath Dean stares at his hands as if they held the answer that would make Cas accept his offer, and he's speaking before he even realizes what he wants to say, “Despite what they say about me, I'm not stupid, I know what people think of me, how they see me, why they act the way they do around me. The image I project, it's not...it's not all lies I guess, but I'm tired, ya know? I'm tired of it all, and I think maybe doing this will help make things easier,” At that point Dean couldn't not look at the deep pools of Cas's eyes, only to find that the writer was already staring intently back at him when he looks up, as he continued saying, “Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning, but the more I struggle and fight against all the build up of pressure the deeper I end up sinking and one day I'm just not gonna be breathing anymore. And all I'll have had left behind is the idea of myself. I know this probably sounds stupid, believe me, but I really just fucking need this, Cas.”

Dean didn't know how to put into words why this was so important, part of it, he knew was that it was a way to force himself to dig through his own muddy, broken masks to find the one that wasn't a fake. But in his own selfish ways, he could secretly admit that he wanted somebody to know him, know all the fucked up versions of himself that made him say the things he said, act the way he acted, speak the way he spoke. It was about having somebody who would remember _him_ , the real him and not just some well constructed idea of who he was supposed to be. And with the way things stood right now, he was just a puppet whose strings were being pulled by somebody else's hands, doomed to remain unknowable and unseen if he didn't do something.

This, right here, was his something.

“Okay.”

Dean's head shoots up, that one simple word causing the muscles around his mouth to form the first real smile in long enough a time for the expression to feel foreign on his face. Cas wouldn't ever know what that one word would mean to him, how that single word made him feel weightless with relief.

Yet, at the same time, shame and guilt washes over him at what he was knowingly leading Cas into. Because the truth of the matter, which he wouldn't ever share with Cas, even as he was preparing to lay himself bare to the blue eyed man in front of him, right down to the secrets he had buried deep in the recesses of his childhood memories, was that Dean never wanted Cas to write his biography so much as his eulogy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me just reiterate and reassure; THIS HAS A HAPPY ENDING. There's just a lot these boys have to go through to get there and John is a motherfucking bastard that won't let Dean be happy if it means he can't control how and who he decides to be happy with. And Cas has a little more of his own backstory as to why he's the way he is that I'll get into later on. 
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


	5. Let Me Go

_Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go  
Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go  
Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go  
Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go _

_-NF, Let Me Go (The Search)_

The bathroom was filled with the usual cloying, steamy dampness from the hot shower Dean had just taken. His muscles had started to ache something fierce from all the dance rehearsals he had been doing, then kicking the performances up by a hundred notches for the sake of impressing his audiences and making it a good show for them.

Dean hadn't ever thought he'd be one of those artists, not having been particularly inclined to robustly move about on stage in practised steps to the beat of his songs. When he was younger he had always imagined a more intimate set-up, just him, his instrument of choice and the ears of thousands of people, waiting in anticipation to hear the first soft strum of his guitar or the first note ringing out from the press of a key on his piano.

A pale imitation of the types of shows his mom had done when she was selling out her own concert tickets, before everything had fallen to ashes at her feet, with all the music slowly drying up, becoming irrelevant. Forgotten. As the bodies slowly faded from the seats of her own once crowded arenas.

Stepping out of the tub, wrapping a towel around his waist, Dean moved up to the basin, swiping at the condensation clinging to the mirror above until his own reflection was staring back at him through the water streaked area. Looking at himself like this, just him staring at his own murky reflection, Dean often wondered what it was that he hated so much about himself, what it was that made all things Dean Winchester seem so pitiful and tragic and unworthy in his eyes to the point where he couldn't find the strength to save himself anymore.

When those thoughts wandered too far, became too loud to ignore, he then tried to imagine what other people saw that made them all comment on his good looks, that made them all suffocatingly love him so damned much, yet still all he could see were softly bowed lips that looked too feminine for his own good and caused more trouble than what they were worth. Freckled skin that he had to constantly cover up no matter where he went, all in an attempt to mask both the childish spots that never quite matched onto the smooth faced image being sold to the world, and to cover the black and blue blemishes left behind by angry fists when nobody was looking. Green eyes that he remembered seeming to be so much brighter in their hue, but now instead just stared dully back at him, the bright, golden green now gone dark and mossy, tinged with red from his constant lack of sleep.

_Boohoo, poor you. This isn't the time for a pity party Dean, get a hold of yourself for God's sake._

It was funny, the voice in his head started sounding less like himself and more like his dad each day.

**

As the singer made his way out of the bathroom once he was fully dressed, stepping out into his bedroom, he wasn't all that surprised to find Sam already there, looking like a real man on a mission what with the little black Bluetooth piece in his ear and tapping away at his phone, no doubt going through all the places they had to be and people they had to meet.

It was strange, that feeling of missing somebody when they were standing right in front of you. Sam had been (and still was) his best friend, no matter the fact that Dean was his employer. But something had changed, shifted in their relationship and the singer knew he was entirely to blame for all of it.

Back when Dean was still on the rise, Sam had been the only person Dean had taken a personal interest in hiring when his dad had told him that if he never saw to getting a personal assistant he would be choosing one for his son. He hadn't been much involved with his crew selection, even back when he was still an excited and impressionable newbie in the industry, being too young for that sort of thing, but at almost twenty he knew he was damn well going to be front and centre when it came to choosing somebody who would basically be in his more private space twenty-four seven.

Sam had probably been the least qualified candidate back then, no older than he was even though his application papers had stated otherwise, which once Dean had found out were obviously fakes, should've been a major red flag as to why the boy was the absolute wrong choice. But Dean had found the whole situation slightly amusing, his intrigue to meet whoever it was that came up with this not so well thought-out plan the only thing that got Sam pushed through to the interview portion of the process in the first place.

Dean never had serious prospects about hiring him, he had just wanted to see how far Sam would go with his little stint, what his next move would have been in convincing Dean to hire him, wanting to see what type of moron would honestly think this plan would work in the real world.

But turned out the joke was really on him.

It was so strange how they seemed to just click, both their façades coming down, not by much, they were still for all intents and purposes strangers to each other, but the way they flowed, the way they never even hesitated in getting the banter going back and forth took him by surprise. And if Dean believed in any of that cosmic mambo-jumbo, he would've sworn they could've been brothers in another life with the way they settled into each other's spaces.

The singer couldn't explain it really, he was less than talkative with any new stranger, but with his shaggy hair and puppy-dog brown eyes, Sam had cast the least intimidating figure out of anyone he had ever met. It hadn't taken long for conversation to veer off track, and by the end of that afternoon Sam had come clean that his family had been going through a really rough financial time, having to use all they had saved for his college tuition to pay for his dad's surgery after he had had a freak accident at his salvage yard, with the bar his mom owned barely being enough to keep them afloat and having a little sister who had big dreams of making it out of Sioux Falls, same as he did.

In the end they had struck up a deal, he would give Sam the job, if he promised that he wouldn't be running around telling John about every single detail of his life. A fact Dean knew was one of the only reasons why John wanted him to get a PA since the business end of his career made it so that his dad couldn't be with him every day and every where he would be travelling. Predictably, John hadn't been so gung-ho on the idea of hiring somebody so young, but Sam was the one thing Dean hadn't backed down on, and not telling his dad about the fake documents probably helped his case too though.

Sam must've thought him naïve when he got that final phone call back to say the position was his, that he would actually hire somebody so inexperienced, in well, _everything._ But so far, Sam had proven to be one of the few good choices he had ever made, since regardless of his age, he had taken up the job of being his personal assistant way more seriously than Dean had anticipated, even when Dean knew this was far from his ideal career of being a lawyer.

Dean knew that Sam must've had enough saved up by now to go off to Stanford like he originally planned to do, since there were a few perks to being a PA of a multi-millionaire who actually gave a fuck about his employees' salaries, but the rush of gratefulness he feels for Sam sticking by his side (a decision that yet still confused Dean) is quickly hacked up, bit by bit, as the unrelenting regret and guilt he feels comes crashing down, always seeming to rear up and sit heavy on his chest whenever he thought about what just existing in Dean's universe did to Sam. He sees it there, in the brief flash of pure relief in those hazel eyes when Sam spots Dean making his way out of the bathroom.

Standing, fresh-faced and _whole_.

They never really speak about what happened that night. Dean fucking hates himself even more for knowing that his actions led to Sam seeing what he did; the limp, bloody, cut open reminiscence of a friend dying out on a cold tiled bathroom floor, when the only reason he sought him out that night was to congratulate Dean on his success. Dean wasn't stupid enough not to know that it was that fucking night that was the thing sitting weighted and rotting between them, choking out their conversation and closing off each to the other.

Sam had tried to bring it up after he came back from the hospital, John having never allowed any visitors to see him during the brief period he was still forced to stay there. Coming home though, Dean had felt so fucking numb, so empty, so _disappointed,_ that he had lashed out when Sam had pushed and pushed and _pushed_ him into speaking about it, or getting some type of professional help, fuck what his dad said. And Dean had repaid his concern by just exploding on him, telling Sam that he was nothing more than a charity case and should just stick to his god-damned job, that it was none of his business even though he had probably embedded that dreadful scene forever in Sam's subconscious, very much making it his business.

The singer had known the words had been cruel and scathing, meant to dig in and hurt as they were intended to do, but the worst of it all, the most fucked-up part, was that even in retrospect Dean couldn't find one single part of himself that wished he could take back what he said, not when it got Sam to just fucking _stop_ , stop asking questions, stop looking at him like he was this broken _thing_ that couldn't stand up to John, stop caring about him to the point that he had put off his own plans to keep an eye on him. And so, Dean had done what he was so good at, pushing him away like he did everybody else until his once best friend became just another person on the sidelines. If nothing else, Dean was a master at self-sabotage, caging himself in by his own actions until he was the only person left stuck behind the metal bars of his prison. The way it should be.

After that, conversations between them had suddenly dried up to the bare minimum of discussing Dean's schedule and interviews and a strange part of himself couldn't help but feel thankful that maybe, all this would just mean that the final blow wouldn't be so hard for Sam to take the second time around, the knowledge consoling him, knowing deep down that this fucked up situation was all for the better in the end.


	6. I Miss the Days

_Take me back when I was happy, but I wasn't actin'  
Vulnerable but didn't see it like some kind of weakness  
Or a thing that's unattractive  
Had emotion, but I learned to mask it  
Didn't know what I was runnin' after  
Didn't know the older I would grow  
The more I'd lose control and take in all the baggage  
It's really sad when everything you thought was stable crashes  
Everything you thought would take the sadness  
Really only made it deeper, got me off the deep end askin'  
Will we ever feel like we imagine?  
Will we ever feel like we adapted?  
Will we ever feel like we did back then?  
Just take me back when, take me back when..._

_-NF, I Miss the Days (The Search)_

“Again!” Came the loud booming voice of the obnoxious dance instructor. Castiel gritting his teeth for about the hundredth time that day.

He could see Dean upfront, panting and sweating and looking as if he were ready to pass out. It wasn't surprising he looks like that when Mr. Obnoxious had made them skip lunch and small breaks when he wasn't satisfied with Dean's practice routines.

It made the other two dancers doing the performance with him grumble slightly in irritation at the singer when he wasn't taking note, even as Castiel saw them giving Dean encouraging smiles when he tried to apologise for doing such a bad job today.

But Castiel tries to calm himself down as he stands on the sidelines, it wasn't the writer's place to say or do anything, in fact his job was to do the exact opposite of interfering. Besides it would be rather presumptuous of him, stepping over a line he didn't know whether he could cross just yet where Dean was concerned.

It didn't stop that _something_ in him from twisting bitterly at the thought that he couldn't do anything though. The feeling intensifying every time he sees the singer obviously struggling as his movements become more stilted and awkward and his smile tinged with an embarrassment that wasn't funny or cute, instead looking as if he wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground and just die as the other back-up dancers stand on the sidelines watching him fail again and again and again.

After that night, now about a week ago, when Dean had come to his room, a strange feeling had started building up inside him, with the green-eyed man being the sole focus of its attention. But Castiel wasn't all that chuffed at looking too deeply into it, too scared at what he might find there swirling around and moulding itself to the shape of Dean.

Things kept changing between them it seemed like, too fast for Castiel to grasp until the next morph in their relationship came about. But there was a strange undercurrent in this _something_ that he was feeling, and more than not wanting to look too closely in acknowledging what it was, he wanted desperately for it to just go the fuck away.

And he knew it would, he just needed time away after all of this. It would would go away. It _had_ to _._

“Dean what did I say! Watch your feet!”

Castiel had to ball his fists up this time, nails digging into the soft flesh of his palms to keep from decking Mr. Obnoxious in the fucking mouth at the way he kept reprimanding Dean as if he were a god-damned _child_ , this not being the first time his voice dripped with such righteous condescension.

His eyes couldn't help but scan over to the singer, his chest heaving up and down, seeing the way he shifted from foot to foot. The movement seemed oddly stilted and looking back up at Dean's face, he sees a flash of pain coordinating with the soft press of pressure every time one foot hits the ground.

Dean had clearly injured himself, and the fucking _expert_ in the room didn't seem to give a fuck when the next scathing words tumbles out of his mouth, “Okay, let's just end things there, clearly we're getting nowhere today. I'll see you all bright and early tomorrow! If we don't nail this by the end of practice it's going to be _another_ long day, for _all_ of you this time.”

The words were inclusive enough, but the subtle shaming and pointed stare made it obvious who the words were meant for. And everybody knew it as they stared daggers at Dean's turned back.

Before his temper can simmer and broil more, he's surprised when he sees Dean walking over to the writer's spot in the corner where he's standing apart form everybody else, with a limp to his step that he can't fully hide as much as he tries to.

He thought he had been good about somewhat hiding his presence, but with the easy way and precise direction Dean had taken, the singer had probably noticed him a while ago, even though he had come into the studio a whole hour after rehearsals started, having had some issues with security and access as usual.

“Hey...you wanna...do something...later on? Thought we could...hang out, watch a...movie or something,” Dean says, not even waiting to catch his breath as he wheezes his way through the question.

Castiel can't help but raise an eyebrow at that, even though he knows how they had been trying to find some common ground, some way to make their arrangement work. Their first attempt hadn't gone so well, it was new territory even Castiel had limited experience with, and making their dynamic and set-up more like an interview had gone horribly wrong.

Castiel had been the wrong kind of straight forward that Dean had probably needed, asking questions that he could admit needed a little more tact and becoming too disconnected from the conversation, which was something that often helped him become as to the point as he needed to be in the short amounts of time he had with interviewing people.

But when he saw how Dean had instantly clammed up as he sat there squirming, all awkward with nerves and twisting fingers, attempting to stutter out responses that weren't rehearsed, the writer had ended it, much to both their relief. It had been productive in a surprising way though, a learning experience they both needed to see how to go forward from here.

Though Castiel hadn't been able to come up with anything new, besides impulsively purchasing a notebook he had seen at a random store, gifting it to Dean before he could rethink the whole thing. He had told the singer he could use it for anything he wanted when he looked skeptically at the brown leather-bound book.

A part of him found the idea of basically telling Dean to keep a diary rather ridiculous, but the more he thought about it, the more he knew it was the kind of privacy and discretion Dean needed to become more vulnerable with exploring what he wanted to say, something that Castiel couldn't give him. Not now, not so soon.

And it could be what they needed to help Dean eventually open up to him once he got a little more practice with expressing himself in a way that wasn't influenced by the no doubt copious amounts of media training he had went through since he was a teenager. The rehearsed phrases and responses he kept throwing out, which Castiel had heard in a few of the singers interviews when doing his own research on the man, proved that much as they cropped up even though he could see Dean had been trying.

This was new though. And the more Castiel thought about it, the more he was certain it could work. Dean needed to not feel like he was the subject of some interrogation and Castiel needed to veer off from the direct, no-nonsense 'getting down to business' approach he usually adopted when it came to these things, not wanting to waste either party's time.

“Guess I could make some time for you,” Castiel says with a shrug, the joke delivered flat and deadpan in its irony.

This time though, he can't hide his surprise as he hears Dean actually _laugh_ at the joke, the sound carrying through the studio until some curious heads turn in their direction, the singer trying to cover up his smile and his laugh by placing a hand in front of his mouth.

But that just leads to Castiel openly staring at the deep, golden-green hue of his eyes that are staring back at him with amusement, the writer noticing the crinkle and genuine mirth in them instead of the polite and confused looks his humour usually gets.

Somebody actually getting and laughing at his jokes was definitely new for him. Not knowing how to react (not wanting to ruin the moment), Castiel just stands there, instead not saying anything as his alternative, probably making the picture of them look ridiculous with his straight face and Dean's laughing expression.

“I'll see ya tonight at eight then, I should be done by then,” Dean finally says once he's gained back some composure, but he's still smiling up at Castiel like he hung the fucking moon or some shit, eyes bright and starry and the writer's still too tongue tied to say anything back.

Not with how Dean's looking at him like that, so he just stands there and nods his head like an idiot.

_This is bad. Really fucking bad._

It's the only thing he can think of as Dean slightly hobbles away before Castiel can even ask if he's okay like he meant to do before the singer took him so off guard as he did.

**

“ _Some Kind of Wonderful_? Huh, didn't take you for the rom-com type,” Castiel says as he reads out the title of the movie as it flashes across the screen in the intro credits, tilting his head in confusion at Dean's choice.

When Dean asked if he wanted to 'hang out' this wasn't exactly what he had been imaging, but then again he hadn't been thinking much of the actual activity part of it either.

At exactly eight, Dean had come knocking on his hotel door (it was one of the nicer ones booked, with even the single rooms having a flat screen smart TV, couch and queen bed). He had been fresh-faced with his hair still damp from the presumable shower he had taken before, wearing a pair of dark sweat pants and a hoodie, the picture of casual youthfulness.

While Dean had been setting up picking something to watch, Castiel had decided it was good to order in some food since neither of them had eaten anything yet. Coming back from collecting their food at his door, he found the singer loading the movie on whatever streaming service the hotel had.

Red-faced at the slight judgement on Cas's face at his choice, Dean splutters in defence, “Come on, it's an 80's cult classic and the only good movie on this shit list and I haven't watched it in years, so whatever. Just get over here already, I'm starving.”

Castiel can't help but be amused at his huffy indignation as he takes a seat on the carpeted floor at the foot of the bed, a pillow stacked behind him from Castiel's bed for maximum comfort.

Silently, before he sits himself down on the floor besides Dean he gets one of the spare couch pillows, handing it to Dean. At his confused expression, Castiel simply nods toward the foot he had stretched out awkwardly, knowing it's the one he had probably injured with the bandage he can see peeking from the top of his socked feet, “For your foot,” is all he says as he takes his own seat next to him after placing all the food down from the cart onto the floor in front of them.

“You can just say you like the movie Dean, nothing wrong with having a few guilty pleasures,” Castiel replies to his earlier comment, trying to bring them back from the weird moment, seeing out the corner of his eyes at how Dean stares at the pillow, holding it close and smiling slightly before he finally moves it into position, looking a lot more comfortable.

“Shhh, movie's starting,” Dean says with a wave of a hand, eyes locked onto the screen with unabashed interest and Castiel just shakes his head, thinking he'd never be able to understand people who went crazy for 'cult classics' as Dean so eloquently stated.

**

“ _You look good, wearing my future,”_

“God! That's one of the best last lines to any movie. Ever. I swear,” Dean says as he flops back after the ending credits start to roll.

Castiel can grudgingly admit that it was a good movie, but he didn't think he found the same appeal to it as the singer obviously did, it just wasn't realistic _or_ practical and he says as much, “You don't think him spending all his savings on a piece of jewellery for a girl is vain and materialistic? He could've used it for much more important things, perhaps as a safety net once he's out of high school and clearly on his own, with no help from his father, could've even funded his own art for all that a couple hundred dollars was worth back then.”

Dean has his head leaned back against the end of the bed, and Castiel can see his eyes scrunching as he hums, actually taking the time to think out his response as he turns the writer's words over in his head.

Not moving from his position, the singer shifts his head so his piercing green eyes are staring at Castiel, that _something_ surging up again, making his heart hiccup in his chest as Dean locks his eyes on him.

Dean finally looks away, and looking up at the ceiling instead he says, “Guess you have a logical point there. But I dunno, don't think love's supposed to be about logic ya know? You just do what feels right I guess and besides, that shit's not supposed to be taken literally, him buyin' earrings an' all.

I like to think more about what they meant for him, chasing after your future, your hopes and dreams, no matter that everybody else thought he was crazy and would never pull it off. Maybe fucking up a little as you do it, and making the wrong choices, but knowing you'll end up wherever and with whoever you're supposed to be with. It's irrational, and stupid, the exact opposite of practical, and if that ain't love I don't know what is. So yeah, it's a materialistic gift, but only if you choose to see it as anything else but earrings and not what they meant to him.”

“Sounds like you've been in love before then?”

Castiel didn't know why those words left such a sour taste in his mouth. And this time he couldn't deny that that _something_ had an edge of possessive protectiveness to it that had been rearing up all damned day. Now bubbling and smoking at the pit of his stomach when he thinks about Dean saying those words and thinking about someone as he said them.

It was a dark and ugly feeling and he tried to shove it away, but today just fucked him up since that morning, and he couldn't help seeing his current feelings for what they were.

He was fucking green with envious jealously at whoever Dean was thinking about when he said what he did. Still, didn't mean he had to acknowledge them in any way, shape or form, which is exactly what he did.

“Yeah, I think I was once, 'long time ago,” the words were something new, something open and unexplored as it drifted and settled into the space between them and Dean knew this was it, this was what he wanted when he showed up at Cas's room that night.

“What happened, then?” The words were blunt and steel edged against Dean's softer and more vulnerable ones, but at this point that just defined who they were when with each other. Both finding a strange comfort in this fact, realizing that nothing had really changed since that first meeting on the rooftop, a balance to the unacknowledged fact that in reality, everything about their relationship had changed since Dean's request.

“I was stupid and thought people wouldn't care who I dated, turns out I was wrong, really fucking wrong.”

“What do you mean by that?” Castiel scrunches his own face up in confusion, Dean had the uncanny ability to speak circles around him, always one step ahead when Castiel couldn't catch onto his rhythm fast enough.

“Before all this,” Dean starts, his hand moving in a waving gesture as a way to explain what he meant by that, “my life was pretty normal, as normal as it could've been I guess, since dad still insisted on travelling from one hot-spot-for-fame to the next every coupla' months.”

Dean could still remember the discomfort he felt at constantly being the new kid, all eyes on him, even back then, when teachers would introduce him to the class, the other kids watching him as if he were a shiny new toy. Not being able to really make any friends when he was forced to decline offers to hang out, not when he was constantly being booked for auditions or any other platforms his dad could find in getting him some exposure.

“But in the beginning of ninth grade, John decided we should move to L.A, since that's where all the action was happening for budding artists and everything. Was really our last stop before I was signed to my first record label. But for most of that year, I was in the same school, managed to make a few friends, and eventually got a girlfriend too. I was happy. Just really fucking happy for the first time in my life.”

Everything came with a price though and going back home had become more of a struggle once he found out how _not_ -normal his relationship with John was. He had made friends and found solace in being around other people, but John's hold had been rooted down deeper than any of theirs had, keeping Dean quiet, and his secrets tucked close to his chest in fear.

That had been a much harder pill to swallow.

Not that he was gonna tell Cas any of that. Not yet, anyway.

“You're not happy now?” Castiel couldn't help to ask, but he knew it was the wrong question, the wrong time to ask it when he saw Dean's face fall, lips quirked into a grimace.

The singer looks right at him again, something they both had been doing for a while now, as if they could dissect all the parts of each other, the writers fleeting moments of curiosity beyond the glitz and glam not remotely being unrequited as Dean often found himself thinking about the writer when he wasn't close, maybe even more so when he was.

“No,” It's probably the most honest thing he had ever said to another person in his life, the response as simple as it was true.

Castiel lets the word sink in, another piece added to his twisting and shifting perception of Dean, breaking down whatever image he had constructed before meeting the singer, before starting to _know_ him. With another image of him slowly taking up root, holes and broken pieces still needing to be filled in with other truths, other memories, other secrets.

But even though he wants to dive in deeper, being caught off guard at getting an answer he wasn't expecting, he at least has the sense to know that was as far as that thread of discussion should go, at least for tonight.

At the same time, he was far from wanting this conversation to end so soon, so he instead tries to get them back to where they had started, even though that _something_ twists and wails bitterly inside him as he forces out the words, “You want to tell me more?” at Dean's perplexed expression, Castiel tacks on, “Did something happen between you two that it never worked out? Seems like you loved her very much.”

Green eyes shift back to staring at the carpeted floor, watching, but not seeing as fingers embrace, leaving red-streaked imprints on pale flesh as they fidget and twist in their familiar dance, “After,” Dean pauses taking another breath and letting it go on a sigh as the memories long-buried now come racing back, “After I signed with my label, I-I didn't know everything would happen so fast, took so long to get recognised, ya know? But, not even a week later we had to move again so we'd be closer to the studio and people we'd work with. And I don't know, I just didn't want to say goodbye again, so me and Lisa, we decided to try the whole long-distance thing.”

Dean shakes his head, “Fucked, we were fucked. We were a coupla' fourteen year olds pretending we could handle it, fuck what everybody else thought. Just wanting to hold on to what we had, be open about it, like everybody else could. It just made it worse in the end. We were too innocent, too naïve to have ever thought things could work out. Thought it wouldn't matter if people knew about her, and I guess I wanted to prove that I wasn't ashamed to be with her, but people online can be cruel and they pulled out all the stops, and it just felt too big in the end.

Like it wasn't just her an' me anymore. Felt like we had the world in our ears, in our heads, in our relationship. It was just too much and things got out of hand when she had to transfer to a new high school coz people kept bullying her. And I was half way across the country and dealing with my own shit, too. There was this one day I realized we hadn't even spoken or texted each other in a few weeks by that point. So I guess in the end we kinda just ghosted each other, we both knew things had ended between us the day I moved really. And that was that, I guess. ”

Somewhere close to his heart, Dean can feel a rattling inside his chest, a reminiscence of the heartbreak he once felt when he knew it was over for them. Their relationship had been too young, too fragile, too weak for what the world had in store for them. Dean still felt that stab of guilt at knowing that being with him had caused Lisa a lot more trouble than she let on, knowing that a lot of what went wrong was his fault, his stupidity at thinking he could keep up the charade of being normal, being like everybody else, just having a career a lot sooner, that was all.

 _Yeah, they had been fucked_ , Dean thinks to himself.

“What made you want to hold onto her?” Castiel asks, and a part of him knows it's that inquisitive, journalist side of him wanting to understand the memory of a world and place he had no hope of truly knowing except through a few loosely strung together words that made the story he was telling all blurry around the edges, and it was Castiel's job to iron out the edges with his own questions.

It's the first time Dean doesn't want to shy away from Cas's sharp claws digging in, cold blue eyes probing, wanting to see more, to know more, than what he was being told so freely, and the singer couldn't help but to think that this was exactly what he needed.

He didn't want somebody to handle him with kiddie gloves when he got uncomfortable, and even with a few of his missteps, Cas was getting better at reading when to push him, and when to redirect conversations. He was reluctantly impressed Cas could see through his bullshit so easily. He was also a little scared, knowing Cas was gonna see all of him, whether he liked it or not. Something inside him felt a little heartbroken at that, knowing somebody would see how ugly and scarred he was, inside and out.

It was something that surprised Dean, that Cas was so good at reading him, and maybe it wasn't something to be proud of, but he could secretly admit he took comfort in the fact that he was so good at being slightly deceptive and manipulative when situations called for it and people were none-the-wiser. He didn't know how to feel about Cas being an outlier to all the rest.

Either way, Dean was determined to answer the question, and as truthfully as he could. Problem was he hadn't thought about Lisa in a while now, and it was hard trying to step into a version of himself he barely remembers being, but he had to try, “It's hard to explain. In all honesty, I don't even remember her all that well, just maybe the way she made me feel, I guess. How flustered I'd get whenever I saw her down the hall, how warm and light-hearted and happy she always was. She just had this calm, positive ball of energy all the damned time. And I-I was exactly the opposite of all of that, and it just felt good...being close to her, like a lowly moth drawn to a flame.”

Castiel sat there listening, and all the while imaging a fourteen year old Dean, hair a lot more blonde, freckles a lot more prominent, skin a lot more paler, turning all shy and fire engine red at the mere sight of the girl he had a crush on. The girl he _loved._ He was just a little bit enamoured with the thought and a little bit jealous at the person of Dean's clear affection.

Dean sat there, feeling his lips push up in a self-deprecating smirk at his words, knowing somewhere deep down he always wondered whether he was just a project she took on out of pity. Lisa had always been the type of person who wanted everyone around her to be happy and content, and didn't mind putting in the work if they needed that push.

A part of him is reluctant to share that thought with Cas though, because at the same time, he knows that's not fair to her, knows that it could just as easily be his own insecurities rearing up, wanting to taint everything good that's ever happened to him until the doubts made them seem not so good any more. And he'd much prefer to keep the memory of her as one of the few good ones he could have.

“I'm kinda easy, huh?” Dean can't help but laugh a little at himself, and instead of sounding cruel, it sounds genuine and light, and he's stupefied by the sound, his heart shuddering a little when he looks up and sees a similar glint of amusement in Cas's eyes.

“Aren't all fourteen year olds? Sometimes crushes and love can mean the same thing at that age,” Castiel immediately cringes at his words, at how condescending they could sound even though that wasn't the intention.

One step forward, two steps back.

“I mean, not that I'm implying it wasn't really love, I just mean to say-” But before Castiel can finish his attempt at smoothing things over, _again_ , he sees Dean smile and shake his head, interrupting him as he says, “I know what ya mean Cas, just take a breath,” and, quieter, he says under his breath, “and they call me a spaz.”

Then Dean looks at him, eyes sharpened like he's trying to figure something out, “Ya know, I appreciate it an' all, but you don't gotta try so hard not to offend me, man. I mean, I appreciate the effort, but I don't want you walking on egg shells around me trynna' find the right way to say things, I know how tiring that can get. And if you say something I don't like, or that hurts my feelings or something I'll just tell ya, 'hey, fuck off with that shit,' and you'll know you went too far and we can move on. Easy as that, Cas. I want you to be comfortable around me too.”

It was ironic, but Castiel didn't know what to say, how to respond to the look of understanding flickering in Dean's green, green orbs. He was used to asking those hard-hitting questions, but finding the balance for _this_ , whatever it was between them, was a lot harder than he thought it would be. He knew he needed to get more personal, less professional, yet still keep a tight hold onto some semblance of a balance between the two.

To do that though, he still had to become more himself, and not just be Castiel Novak, _Rolling Stone_ Journalist. But he also knew he had always been such a damn unlikable person, inside and out. And knowing how to say things, how to carefully consider and frame words, something that came so naturally to most people, was always something he had had difficulty with.

Maybe it was because he just couldn't care less about most people's feelings, couldn't find it in himself to be more considerate, that coldness creeping in until every aspect of himself was covered with its freezing tendrils, making him seem emotionless, _feel_ emotionless.

And maybe people were right about him, maybe he was a bad person. For not trying to do better, for not trying to be more empathetic, for being too judgemental and opinionated. But worse yet, he thought that what really made him a bad person, inside and out, was that he didn't think he cared about whether he was a bad person or not.

An unexpected warmth washes over him hearing Dean's words though, a sense of freedom he didn't even know he was looking for. A freedom in having somebody not confining his character to the way he should be stringing his words together whenever he spoke, instead of taking a second to try and understand what he meant by them and not by only by how it sounds.

He has a sudden realization then; he fucking _cares_ about what Dean thinks of him, that in all their interactions, he cared about not hurting his feelings with his sharp tongue and unfiltered thoughts. That each and every time he had at least tried to smooth things over, something he never bothered to do with other people.

But the writer shies away from the epiphany as fast as he can, the little warmth that seeped in with Dean's words being snuffed, and it all gets lumped and trapped together with that _something_ he refuses to analyze and look too closely into.

Easily, conveniently, explained away by Dean being his task, his job, nothing more, nothing less.

“So have you ever been in love before?” Dean asks when the silence stretches out too long between them, just wanting something to fill the space. A small part of him being a little more than curious though.

With a raised eyebrow Castiel looks at the singer saying, “Thought I was the one needing to ask questions.”

Castiel offers up a small smile and shakes his head at the coy look Dean gives him, shrugging his shoulders as his own smile begins to form. With a mimicked shrug of the writers own shoulder, he responds to Dean's question, the words freely offered, “Falling in love's not in everybody's cards and it's just not part of everyone's dream, Dean. But I've been in a few relationships here and there, enough for me to know that it's probably not meant for somebody like me anyway.”

“Somebody like you, whaddaya mean by that?”

Sighing, Castiel looks over at Dean, staring at him openly, unashamedly, and as he's about to look away, he sees a flash of understanding flicker in his eyes, asking the question, but already knowing the answer. It's the first time he thinks that maybe, just maybe, they could be more similar than what he expected they could be. And he can tell that Dean knows that too.

It's that flicker, that spark of recognition that he grabs onto and holds close, looking straight into Dean's green, green, eyes as he says, “You're not the only one who has a story to tell Dean. You're just the only one out of the two of us willing enough to freely share theirs.”

_But maybe someday soon, I'll tell you all about my secrets too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Some people confuse being blunt and real with being rude" - NF
> 
> (The quote above I feel relates to how I imagined Cas's character to be spot on and I only recently found this tweet, now a few weeks after this chapter was posted. I definitely need to spread more of the absolute love I have and feel for this artist and just how special his music and words are not only to the heart and soul of this story but to me personally as well) 
> 
> PS. Movie mentioned is a 1987 John Hughes film and is one of my absolute favourites, a recent watch with my sister inspired me on how to move ahead with this chapter coz in all honesty I had no idea how to fill in the missing spaces for the upcoming scenes I have mapped out, so I'm pretty darn happy about that.
> 
> Also, I just wanted this chapter to be somewhat lighter than the last five, and the future chapters, so enjoy it while it lasts I guess.


	7. Lost in the Moment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, check this man's songs out, I promise it'll be worth it, it gets to the level of depth and feel I invest into this story so so much, it's constantly on play when I'm writing this.
> 
> \------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Yeah, they told us that time flies, didn't know what it means  
Now I feel like we just running around tryna  
Catch it and hoping to cut up its wings  
But that ain't gon' happen  
Joy, when was the last time we had it?  
I don't remember 'cause all that we do  
Is go backwards but that's what you get  
When you live in the past  
And I know we breathing but we not alive  
Really, is this the way we wanna die?  
'Til you got everything bottled inside  
If only they knew what goes on in our minds _

_-NF ft._ _Andreas Moss, Lost in the Moment (Therapy Session)_

_It had been a bright sunny day that afternoon, nothing but blue, cloudless skies overhead. The perfect kind of weather for the perfect kind of day, just like momma promised they'd have._

_It was his birthday and momma was taking him to the carnival, a peculiar thing he thought. Even as a five year old he knew that momma and her boyfriend (or well, he supposed her husband now) had always gone at each other's throats about money ever since her and Stevie had started dating a year ago._

_But better still, was that momma had just taken him with her this time, Michael and Luke being forced to stay home. They were Stevie's sons, and had moved in with them when Stevie did too._

_At first he had been excited with the prospect of having two new older brothers, just like momma said he would be when she told him about the five of them living together when he complained at how cramped they would get in their tiny, barely two-bedroom, one bathroom home._

_He still remembered the soft brush of her bony fingers combing gently through his mop of thick black hair as she tried to soothe his worries at the sudden new change to their two-person family, “You shouldn't be sad, baby. Having two new brothers will be wonderful, they're older so they'll be able to protect you from those nasty kids who keep harassing you when you go to school. And just think, they'll take you with them on all their little fun adventures, wouldn't you like that, hmm? I know you've been having trouble making friends at school ever since the move.”_

_She wasn't wrong about that. He never liked the idea of going to a new school but really bad things had happened in their old home with momma's other boyfriend, and one night momma had crept into his room and said, real quiet, that they had to leave. He had been confused and tired and just wanted to go back to sleep, but he already knew what the drill was by then._

_Pack only what he could fit into his yellow school bag with the dinosaur on the front, don't make too much noise, and sneak out the window in the room when momma pulled the car up front. Then get out as quick as he could before waking up the snoring man in momma's room._

“ _I guess,” was all he could say. The thought was nice though, he could admit._

“ _And on top of two new big brothers, you'd get a new daddy, someone you could throw ball with and who'd teach you things I couldn't. Stevie said he wouldn't treat you any different or any less than his own sons. We'd be like one big happy family, doesn't that just sound like a dream sweetheart?”_

_He had heard that line many times in his short five years of life, but he couldn't deny it always made him feel all floaty inside, his little chest bubbling up with hope that maybe this time his momma wasn't telling him lies and they wouldn't have to move in a few months once they were driven away by her bad choices._

_Even with the flash of doubt he could see flit in his momma's own clear blue eyes that people always said her son was lucky to inherit, his young heart had more than enough hope for both of them._

_And even if they had to move, which would make momma sad and cry an awful lot when she thought he was sleeping, he'd still be there for her and it'd be just the two of them again, the way he secretly preferred things no matter how much she said it wasn't enough, never wanting her life to be just the two of them._

_He never understood why hearing her say these familiar words always made his little heart ache like it did._

_So, for momma's sake, he never argued when he had been forced to share his bedroom with the two teenagers who had in a matter of days taken over his space. He never once saw them as his real brothers the way momma wanted him to, but they were constantly bullying him when she wasn't there, and not in the way he saw older brothers on TV bullying their younger brothers._

_When he told momma how he didn't like it, she told Stevie about it, but he had told momma that he needed the little rough housing his sons dealt out, said that he was too soft and needed to toughen up. But when she saw how they had left deep bruises on his thin arms and scraggly face after a particular bad beating, momma had yelled at Stevie for the first time that night, and he could hear their raised voices from where he had been lying in his sleeping bag, which was tucked in the corner of the room._

_It had been one of the worst fights he could remember momma having with one of her boyfriends, but then all of a sudden, everything had gone quiet, and instead of the door slamming to her room after a fight, he could hear Stevie's whispers and the soft click of their bedroom door._

_He didn't want to listen to the noises they made after the door closed, so he covered his ears and tried to bury himself deeper in the confines of his sleeping bag, but not too deep since Luke and Mike had the habit of zipping him closed and leaving him there until he got himself out. He hated how the hot air and how his lungs burned when he couldn't get it open soon enough._

_The next morning, momma had showed the three boys the ring she had on her finger. He had been confused, while the other boys had gone up to hug her, kissing her on the cheek and congratulating her._

_He didn't like how they started to call her_ 'Mom' _after that._

_He didn't like how momma barely spoke to him after that._

_He didn't like the conversation Stevie had with him after that, saying things would be different now and that he had to be less demanding of his momma's attention since he wasn't the only one he needed to take care of now._

_When momma said she was taking him to the carnival in town he had been ecstatic, and even more so when she said it would be just the two of them after he asked where the others were as she started the car._

_When they got there, she had let him go on as many rides as he wanted to, even though he said she didn't need to waste her money. He knew things were getting worse at home since Stevie and momma were arguing everyday now and he didn't want her to get into trouble for him._

_But she had just smiled that bright smile that he hadn't seen in a while, the one that he thought made her look like she used to, and told him it was his birthday, he deserved to be spoiled._

_So, he went on all the rides that he was tall enough to go on (which wasn't a lot, but he didn't want to tell her the big kid rides looked too scary anyway, and he rather enjoyed spinning around in the tea cups with her)._

_He had eaten all the greasy and tooth-rotting sweet carnival food until he felt close to bursting, which didn't take much coz there hadn't been much food at home lately, with him sometimes going to sleep at night without having any all. Michael and Luke having had resorted to a new form of punishment when they stole his portions, saying it was an accident when he told his momma about taking his share, they were just so hungry._

_And after the first time, he never told on them again when momma simply gave him her own food. He knew she needed to eat too, and besides he got free lunch at school every day, and even though they never tasted any good, he could eat that and momma could eat her own food and not have to give hers away._

_The day wore on like that, just the two of them. Having fun, momma making silly jokes, eating food. Just the two of them, like it used to be._

_The sun was setting all too soon, and one by one, rides whose lines were dwindling started to close, along with the vendors and stalls and with disappointment swirling inside him, he knew it was time to go home._

_Before they got to the make-shift exit though, momma put some pressure on his shoulder, stopping him as she bent to his eye level with him, bony fingers trying to comb his too long hair off his forehead, the same blue eyes he saw in his reflection roaming over his face._

“ _What is it momma?” He said, the silence making him uncomfortable even as he pushed back against the soft pressure of her fingers, something he hadn't felt for what could be months now._

“ _It-It's nothing baby. Momma just has to go to the bathroom okay? Just-Just go and stand right over there, by the exit, and wait for me, I'll be back real quick, can you do that for me baby?”_

_Looking at where she had pointed, he could see the exit, it wasn't very far, so he simply nodded at her request._

“ _Okay, momma, I'll wait there until you come back.”_

_She kissed his forehead before standing up, a lingering caress that confused him and made him furrow his brow up at her as she stood. But then she started off in the direction of the green lined porta potties he had seen on the other end of the carnival._

_He walked off to stand by the exit, waiting for her to come back. Just like he said he would._

_But soon enough, his little feet were shifting from one foot to the other with the worry and nerves beating its way through his veins, making him slightly dizzy as his eyes looked out at the significantly less crowded field._

_The clouds had began misting over a while ago, and none surprisingly, in an instant the rain started to fall. The last of the stragglers were scrambling around as he saw them making their way hurriedly to the exit, making him even more agitated and scared when he couldn't see clearly through the rain and people running about as he stood there, shivering in his t-shirt and shorts. The cold rain hitting his skin, his small frame instinctively crouching down to his haunches as he tried to warm himself up._

_Waiting to for his momma by the exit, like he said he would do. Waiting for her to come back, like she said she would._

“ _Whatch'a doing there all by yourself sweetie?” The smooth, soothing voice asked unexpectedly from above as she tried to cover the little boy crouched down low with the umbrella she had, her own clothes soaking through with the pelting rain falling from the once clear, cloudless blue sky._

“ _Waiting for my momma. She told me to wait here, she said she'd be back real quick,” he responded in a stupor, not looking up at her as he still scanned frantically, hopefully, at the field for any sign of the sunflower dress that she had worn that day._

_His frazzled mind and wondering eyes were the reasons why he missed the look of concern flashing across the young woman's face as she looked down at the little boy. His slight frame racked with shivers, her gaze shifting to the practically abandoned field, employees now hurriedly closing up stalls and packing up their trailers for the day. Hardly anyone was there anymore._

_And there was no woman out in the small, empty field._

“ _I think you'd better come with me sweetheart,” she said to him in a gentle tone, realizing with a sense of sadness and utter horror at the exact incident she had unknowingly stumbled upon._

“ _I told momma I'd wait here for her, she's gonna be back real quick,” he repeated, still crouched down. Blue eyes still waiting to spot the sunflower dress that she had worn that day, “My momma'll be back real quick, she said she would be.”_

_**_

Castiel was packing his bags, getting ready to leave this hotel room, not that he had a lot to pack since by now he knew not to get too comfortable. The constant packing and repacking got old pretty quickly, and he wasn't sure how anyone could get used to living like this, a little over a month in and he was already exhausted.

The days had started to blend together, a litany of constant movement, constant nights of waking up not knowing exactly where he was for a few moments before reality had set in when the dredges of nightmares had washed away to that place he kept bottled up. Or tried to at least. It worked most days but it was getting harder lately.

That night had been the worst of them by far, though it wasn't a surprise to him. It was his twenty-sixth birthday today after all, and that one memory had plagued him every year on the exact same day ever since.

He slammed his laptop closed at that thought, the screen to the word document he had open blinking out to black.

Even though a part of him, _most of him,_ had been swept away with Dean's offer, swept up into his world, his hopes and dreams, and all the little things he opened up to the writer about, Castiel couldn't forget why he was there in the first place.

The article.

He had been startled when an email from Naomi had come through two days' ago, wanting a progress report, wanting to know whether he had gotten anything good, wanting to know whether the article was ready, or at least written out before going through the editing process, wanting to know when he'd think he'd be done here, when he would be coming back.

And the only answer running through his mind had been an on-going chorus of _no, no, no's._ No to all of it, he wasn't ready, wasn't ready for the illusion he and Dean had created for themselves to be shattered yet. He wasn't ready to just up and _leave._

Dean had somehow crept past his sharp edges, maybe even didn't mind being pricked by some of his pointed spikes, not letting that stop him from having Castiel right where he needed him, where he seemed to _want_ him. The worst was that he didn't think Dean even knew what he was doing to him, as if it were simply second nature to creep past his defences so easily.

It was all so enthralling and terrifying and exhilarating and fucking painful all at once, and the writer didn't know if he even wanted any of what was going on between them to stop. He was scared of how much _more_ he wanted.

But, he knew today was going to be a clusterfuck and he knew he was going to do something he'd regret if Dean found himself in the writer's space with how messed up everything in his mind was right now.

_She had looked young, and beautiful and happy in that sunflower dress, like how she used to be before, before-_

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, stop!_

He slammed his open palms on the desk, where just the night before he had been sitting, furiously typing away trying to come up with a good story to write, not that his efforts helped any, he was no closer to producing a good enough piece than he was when he started, not knowing where to draw the line between what Naomi expected of him and what Dean needed from him.

Hands burning, aching from its sudden assault, he pressed them flat against the unmarked wooden surface, bowing his head, trying to get the thoughts, the fucking _memories_ , out of his head for one moment so he could just fucking breathe.

Today was going to be a disaster, that at least was a certainty.

**

He was being summoned.

It seemed ridiculous to think of it that way, but he thought the phrase fit rather too well with the poorly veiled _request_ he had received from John Winchester's assistant not thirty minutes ago.

He knew it was no coincidence that the man suddenly decided to take a vested interest in him so soon after Naomi's correspondence. He wasn't a novice in this game of Hollywood anymore, he knew all the ploys and plots and schemes of the real men behind the curtains, the ones who actually ran the shows and he wasn't deterred in the least.

If John wanted to speak with him he would go, listen to what he had to say, and leave. Simple as that. If John wanted to play this game of cat and mouse, seeing who would get the upper hand in the end, who would be the one in the higher position of power, he could play it all by himself.

Through the years, he had had countless threats and baseless defamation lawsuits filed against him that couldn't dream to stand up in a real court, simply being meaningless texts on unimpressive pieces of paper meant to scare him, meant to get him to apologise and take back the words he wrote. It had been an intimidating experience at first, but the writer had become a good enough player to know when to strike and know when to push back, and so far he hadn't interacted with John enough to know which way his pendulum swung, so he'd just wait and see what the man had to say to him for now.

Castiel never had much to live for, but he knew the one thing he had was his writing, no matter that the words and stories he wrote weren't exactly what he wanted out of life. All the same, they were still a part of him, part of his pride and integrity, and even part of what made him happy, those moments when he knew he had written something where all the pieces fit perfectly, and he'd be damned if he let anyone take that away from him, especially when the choice to stop wasn't his to make.

But something in him wavered slightly when he came to John's hotel penthouse suite room, a few floors above his own and one above Dean's. _A power play._

Even though he had no intentions of pussy footing around John, this predicament was a little different than all the rest. Dean would no doubt be the topic of conversation, that was a given, but unlike other times this fact alone had him feeling weary, wasps swarming in his lower stomach, each one piercing his insides in warning.

He had to be more cautious, he doubted Dean had told John about what he and Castiel were actually speaking about when they were together, what their true objective was. And he had a feeling that if he let anything about Dean's plans slip, John would make sure to get Dean away from him. And the writer felt an instinctive fear, that if that happened, he wouldn't be able to get back to him before John made him change his mind about the whole thing completely, about _them_ and the logic of the outcome from what they were doing togther. _._

 _Don't be fucking ridiculous Castiel, there was no_ them _to begin with. Fucking stay focused._

With that thought, he took a breath, raised his fist, and knocked on the closed, polished door.

**

Castiel breathed through the dense, swampy tension filling the air as he sat across from John, blue eyes meeting their match in brown, waiting to see who would make the first move. _Fuck_ , this was some Alpha male bullshit going on right here if ever saw it, but like fucking hell would he be the first to crack regardless.

At his unwavering blue stare, John's lips curled into something mimicking a smirk of satisfaction, as if he were pleased with the new player in his little game.

“This meeting should've happened a lot sooner than now, but I'm sure you already know, running this kind of show is a rather monumental task to do.” John says, Castiel slightly surprised that he had offered up the first words of this impending conversation, all things considered.

Castiel shifted and reached for the cup of coffee John's assistant had placed in front of him mere moments after he had taken a seat, the young lady having seemingly vanished once John had waved her away after she had asked if there was anything else he needed from her.

Every movement, every action he made was calculated, this one not being exempt. He needed a minute to figure out why it felt as if he had just lost his advantage to the chess match he had unwillingly and unconsciously been drawn into, even as John had been the one to lose one of his pawns.

He looked on, taking his time to allow the warm liquid to travel down his throat, burning his insides at the shock of heat, not having bothered to test if it was at the right temperature for consumption or not.

Then it all suddenly clicked into place.

 _Fuck,_ John was a sly son of a bitch. Castiel knew now, he shouldn't have allowed himself to be trapped in that brown eyed stare that had caught onto his own blue the moment he entered the man's impressive hotel suit, wide bay windows looking out into the city below them as they each sat on plush cushioned chairs facing each other. The acknowledgement of those challenging eyes were enough it seemed, Castiel's participation, his presence, alone being a vital part of the man's victory and the writer knew the man was revelling in the idea that he had caught Castiel off-guard.

John could afford to lose that pawn if it meant he would win the game in the end. A man freely willing to sacrifice anything.

If John wanted to play games so fucking badly then he'd see how much John would enjoy not getting a rise out of his opponent like Castiel knew he expected from the writer, his intentions had already been made clear in that fucking self-satisfied smirk and clearly obnoxious statement.

He was a wolf in sheep's clothing, and Castiel would gladly use that knowledge, testing his own strategy as he says, “Dean seems to be handling things rather well from what I've seen, even for how _monumental_ a task this business is, maybe you could speak with him on how better to keep track and stay on top of everything if you're forgetting to schedule meetings. No harm in needing some advice after all.”

The brown eyes clouded, anger rolling around in their depths, the lines around his mouth twitching.

Castiel had hit his intended mark.

Instead of showing his own game plays right on his sleeve, he kept his expression impassive and stoic, lines smooth, eyes not giving away anything as they looked on bored and indifferent. Emotions were always people's downfall, and the ones who were particularly prideful and narcissistic tended to show them all too easily once their feathers were ruffled a little. Seemed as if John was all too predictable. The writer would happily exploit that to its fullest when the situation called for it.

“Well, my son still has a lot to learn from his old man. Dean, he gets too easily riled up, fixating on the littlest things and making them seem like the end of his world. But as a father, I do my best to help him out, even sent him to see some doctors, and they got him on some much needed prescriptions that I think are helping him tremendously.” John's words seemed to tumble out, his wounded pride being soothed over by deflecting Castiel's subtle criticism away from him and onto Dean.

It worked every time. Castiel could admit he felt a sharp swoop in his gut at what John was saying, but he buried it far down into the depths of his mind, this wasn't the time and sure as hell wasn't the place to get distracted from what was happening at this exact moment.

Right here, right now, his attention could only be on John.

He knew getting Dean's side of the story was a guarantee, but people weren't islands, and sometimes it took more than one perspective to fill the gaps of the entire picture, even if perceptions were different and contradictory. So he fully intended to get take advantage of tjis rare situation and get those snippets of John's version from this meeting, whether the man liked it or not. He was a determined fucker, and it was why most PR teams hated him so much.

With the same thread, he continued, stoking the man's ego like he wanted the writer to do, wanting to hear words of praise directly from the mouth that had insulted him, “Oh, well, then I commend your quick action where your son's well-being is concerned Mr Winchester. He seems to be doing much better,” Brown eyes glowed at the compliment that indicated an achievement that wasn't even his in the first place, but still delighting in knowing his actions were being highly acknowledged.

Only to dull at Castiel's retraction of it as he layered the words of praise with words that took all his credibility away, “Although, I guess I can't make this judgement since I've read nothing of note to indicate his previous well-being. By the looks of it I'm sure he would've been just fine even without your intervention.”

John shifted about, taking a sip of his own coffee, looking over his cup at Castiel with a slight frown on his face, no doubt thinking about his next move. But his wounded ego clouded his judgement, his senses not as sharp as they should be. And Castiel knew this meeting was no longer between John and himself, but between himself and John's pride.

The man placed his cup back down, coming to his own conclusion as he responds, “One might think so, Castiel,” the use of the writer's name giving him some illusion of control over the situation, his mind supplying him with any tactic to get him on top once again. But Castiel was unfazed, a name was a name and he didn't give a fuck about the respecting formalities when it wasn't useful to him or duly deserved. The writer could see John's dissatisfaction with the lack of response at his power move, so instead he continued.

“But the truth is, my son is quite a troubled young man, you see. Not doing so good up there ya'know,” he says as he gestures to his own head and Castiel gets the picture, “but when duty calls, I'm proud to know I raised a son who knows where his priorities lie. His mother was the same, God rest her soul. But she didn't have the same drive like Dean does. Boy just wants to make his old man proud and I do what I can to help along the way, do the things his mother wouldn't let me do for her. All this about having wanted a husband and not a manager an' all, which might I add I completely respected.”

And continued still when he wasn't getting so much as an understanding, sympathetic nod from the writer who just sat there, watching and waiting for that one thing he knew would be coming. The piece he needed to pin down who John Winchester was.

“There's a lot of these conspiracy theories around her death, quite upsetting really, and I try to keep Dean out of all that, not that there's a lot'a articles out there about her, she wasn't as big as she could'a been if she just applied herself more to the art of the industry, but she did refuse my help after all, could'a taken her to the top like I am Dean. Anyway, Mary just had a weak mind for it all, ya'know, I just regret that Dean spent so much time with her, was a bit of a mamma's boy, but I did what I could. A bit of a stage dad I must admit, but this was m- _Dean's,_ this was Dean's dream, and I just wanted the best for him, like any single father should want for their children.”

And there it was, Castiel thought, the stumble he was looking for as he sat listening, disguising his own satisfaction as giving John his undivided and rapt attention.

 _'My_ dream'. John had wanted to say ' _My_ dream'. 

_Check-fucking-mate._


	8. Got You On My Mind

_(It's real)..._

_You got me thinking things I never used to  
I'm not the phone type, I'd rather be with you  
Sometimes I hold back from saying, "I miss you"  
But I miss you  
I have to admit, on this road I get lonely  
But you make me smile every time that you call me  
You let me be myself  
You don't control me_

_-NF, Got You On My Mind (Therapy Session)_

Cas was avoiding him, it was the only explanation Dean could think of as he sat beside Sam in the limo, driving back to their hotel from the plethora of interviews he had scheduled that night.

Usually Cas never exactly tagged along on every one of his day-to-day activities, but he was there for the majority of it, and the fact he hadn't seen Cas _at all_ the entire day was a little disconcerting.

His eyes couldn’t help but look over to the side every once in a while during the day, hoping to catch a glimpse of a tan coat or to find blue eyes already staring at him. Only for each desperate glance to come up empty, with Dean feeling more off-kilter than he had in a while as the pit in his stomach grew.

It was new though, these emotions, not thinking about whether there was something he had done wrong, if he was becoming a nuisance, a bother that Cas wanted out of. But Dean’s paranoia for once shifted outward, and grew until the singer couldn’t ignore the fact that he was worried _about_ Cas. The writer could say what he wanted to, but Dean was pretty much all he had right now since he wasn’t that into making friends while he was this far from home.

Dean couldn’t help but to fret over any and all scenarios of Cas having had injured himself, or questioning whether he was feeling sick and needed medication or any number of incidents where he needed help, with nobody coming to his aid.

Responsible.

That was what Dean was feeling right now; responsibility for Cas, wanting to make sure nothing bad had happened to him and that he was okay. It was a terrifying thing, this bond that had grown between them, being made less malleable and breakable with every day that went by.

_Fuck, I shouldn't be feeling this way, it's only been a couple hours Dean, get a fucking grip._

He had given himself the same pep talk throughout the day. It didn't help. Not when he kept finding himself looking across the spaces of the various rooms he had been in that day, seeing if he could spot the flash of a lone-standing figure amongst a pool of people moving this way and that.

But there had been no Cas-shaped figure standing in the corner, trying to go unnoticed even though he stood out (how the fuck could he not in that tan-coloured coat covering the usual white shirt and blue tie, amongst the crowd of jeans and t-shirt wearing crew members meandering about).

There had been no messy dark curls that Cas couldn't bother to tame down. And there had been no deep, cool, cerulean blue eyes trailing Dean across the room when he thought the singer wasn't paying attention.

Something about his absence made Dean's stomach lurch, in part due to the worry slowly gnawing away at his insides, thoughts racing through his head of something having had happened to Cas during the night, and another part in anxiousness, which had him questioning why he cared so much about Cas not having been anywhere he could find him today.

And that was one thing he couldn't hide even if he tried. No matter what pleasing mask he had put on that day, each and every one had deep lacerations slashed down the middle as frantic green eyes searched the room, brows furrowed in thought, shaking hands not calming down no matter how many times he tried, checking his phone to see if Cas hadn't maybe left him a message, his mind completely lost on the blue-eyed man that had crept under his skin.

_Fuck, fucking fuck, this wasn’t normal for him._

It would’ve been a much easier pill to swallow if he could admit this was just some crush he had on someone who really made the grumpy, frumpy, devil may care look down pat, but this wasn’t that, and it had never been that, not even when they had sat looking over at the rising sun up on that balcony.

It had always been something _more,_ something bigger than he could logically explain.

He didn't exactly know how or when it happened but Cas had gotten to him, burrowed deep down, deeper than his flesh, deeper than the blood pumping slowly through his veins, and deeper still than his slow-beating heart.

It seemed Cas (or maybe it was Dean himself) had made room for a Cas-shaped hole. And he couldn’t yet tell if it was just one more carving cutting through and breaking off more of himself in the process, or whether it was like plaster, filling all the cracked spaces on a dented, shattered wall, imperfections still seen but mending old wounds and preventing more damage.

He knew what this was, what the writer meant to him, even as he desperately wished he didn't. The singer had a plan, and Cas had merely been part of that plan, not a divergent from it.

Fucking three more weeks, that was all, his final show down here then they'd be off, leaving the US and Dean could finally be free.

Like he always dreamed he would be when this was all over. He just had to stick it out until then and not do anything stupid in the meantime.

He could do that, he could.

**

They were ten minutes away from the hotel, Dean lost in his own thoughts when Sam, unexpectedly opened his mouth, “You going up to see Castiel? Strange though, haven't seen him all day.”

Dean turns and looks at his assistant who's typing away on his iPhone, the singer sure he just made an off-hand sort of remark that wasn’t worth responding to, but there was something there, something about the statement being so blasé that made Dean question his assistant, “Why would you think I'd go and see Cas?”

Unintentionally Sam snorts, and when he finally looks over and down at Dean he has the oddest smirk on his face, one Dean can't quite place, “Oh please, you saying you're not then?”

At his probing, soft-hazel gaze, Dean bows his head, and Sam can see the splotches of red tinting Dean's right cheek in the warm glow of the car lights, and he gives Dean a knowing look.

Finally, almost fucking shyly the singer stutters over his words as he says, “Didn't say that, I mean I might, I was thinking about it...I guess...Just to see if he’s okay, least I can do.”

Sam just nods his head, not making a big deal out of Dean's admission. Tf there was one thing Dean loved about the big Sasquatch, it was that he was chill about most things, and simply took things as they came.

But then he looks over at Dean with the biggest smirk stretching across his face, and the singer takes back everything her ever said and knew about the big moose as Sam, as he opens his big mouth, “My my, is _the_ Dean Winchester actually blushing right now? You totally have it bad for him, don't you? You been talking to him an awful lot more than I thought, guess grumpy, blue eyed men just does it for ya, huh?”

He was the devil incarnate is what he was.

“What! I don't like him! Sam, what the fuck?!” Dean shouts indignantly, punching Sam on the shoulder just to top off the angry-embarrassed-teenage-girl denial he had going on.

Sam starts belting out in laughter at Dean's vexed look, and the singer covers his face when he can’t seem to get his cheeks to cool down.

 _This,_ this _was how things used to be between them. Missed ya Sammy._

Funny how that worked, Cas wasn't even there, yet he gave this to Dean. Gave him back a moment of something he thought he had destroyed and burned to ashes forever. But here it was, their easy banter brought to life as if it had never been gone, with Cas right at its centre. Sam's bright laughter aimed at him. Their words flowing easy and assured.

The friendship he had yearned for since that day he saw Sam frantic and desperate, red splotches smeared all over his shirt as he placed Dean’s head in his lap, hands completely covered in the dark and red sticky mess as he closed them over the singer’s wrist.

The one where the blade had gone too far, gone too deep, over and over and over again. He couldn’t remember much, but he somehow remembered the swooping acidic sensation of his own heart breaking, seeing the wet-pools of pain he had put in those young, innocent hazel eyes.

As if Sam could feel where his mind had gone, his laughter dies down slowly, together with Dean's wandering thoughts.

But Sam being Sam, he can’t leave it there just yet, and in a softer voice he says, “It's his birthday today,” at Dean's raised brow, silently questioning how Sam even knew that fucking fact, the assistant just huffs out a laugh, “You did ask me to find everything I could on the guy you know. Anyway, maybe he just wanted a day off. And hey, that shirt and access card you requested should've gotten to your room by now, perfect time to gift it wouldn't you say? And it’s team building tonight, he’d fit right in.”

But Dean says nothing, his thoughts already taking him away to a place Sam couldn’t reach, and the assistant sighs a little in defeat, smirk fading as he does so, but before he can completely let the topic go he can’t seem to help but add on, “Think he likes you too by the way. The way he looks at you, like you're not just another story to him, like you're an actual person. It’s not something you can fake, not like that anyway. You should maybe give him a chance if it comes rolling your way, he could be good for you.”

At that Sam surprisingly hears Dean's own soft voice respond dubiously a moment later, “That doesn't mean he likes me ya know. Maybe he's just not an asshole and more of a decent human being than the rest of 'em reporters are.”

The singer had him there, but he still thought Dean was wrong, really fucking wrong. Even though he was the younger of the two, Sam had him beat in the romance department and he knew Castiel looked at Dean like he was the only person worth taking note of, the only person worth his attention, and not in the starstruck kind of way. He’s seen enough of those looks directed at his friend than even Dean was aware to know whatever was happening between them wasn’t some celebrity worship going on.

Still, that was probably too much for Dean to hear right then, not with the tail spin of thoughts he was going down, and all Sam ends up saying is, “Maybe, maybe not. Would still wish him a happy birthday if I were you though, just sayin'.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” is Dean's last response as the limo finally pulls into the underground parking garage of the hotel, hoping it didn’t look too obvious how fucking eager he was to go and check up on the writer.

But there was no hope of that, not when he hopped out the door at lightning speed, not even waiting until it had come to a complete stop in its parking spot. And the smirk Sam had lost comes back in full force, shaking his head and wondering how anyone could miss the singer’s own obvious infatuation with the grumpy, blue eyed journalist. 

**

It's ten minutes later, around eight-thirty pm already, when Dean finds himself, fist poised in preparation to knock on Cas's room door, a vague echo of when he stood here the last time he had showed up uninvited to the writer's hotel room.

But things were different this time ‘round. Right now he was here as a friend, and not as someone who wanted anything out of the writer.

He could be that, he could be Cas's friend, it was enough. It had to be enough.

With that thought being the push he needed to get the vague bubbling of excitement out of his system, he finally raps his knuckles on the door, taking a step back and bouncing on the balls of his feet as the last of his over-anxious energy seeks an escape.

Not a minute later the door swings open, and there Cas is, in all his mussed-up, frumpy glory, sans his tan coat. Instead, Cas was dressed in the most casual clothes he's ever seen him wearing besides the boxer shorts and t-shirt he had worn that first time. He was sporting a pair of washed out blue denim jeans and navy Henley long-sleeve shirt, wearing no shoes the singer notes as he completes the involuntary once-over he’s giving Cas right now.

Dean can't help but swallow, his mouth suddenly gone dry as he realises that his trail down Cas’s body wasn’t entirely platonic when seeing whether he looked fine or not, which he did. Look fine that is.

 _Yeah, real fine,_ his brain supplies not so helpfully.

He pastes on his biggest smile to try and down play his actions and thoughts, even though he knows Cas can see right through it as one dark brow rises at his odd behaviour.

At least Cas didn’t look like he had had an injury or was sick or anything. Maybe Sam was right, maybe he just wanted the day off. And here Dean was, intruding.

_Shit, this was a bad idea._

Even as the thought pops in his head he finds himself reluctant to leave, and proceeds to make a complete ass of himself instead, “Hey Cas! Uhh, can I come in?”

It’s the first words that come out of his mouth, the greeting too loud and enthusiastic and presumptuous, making him cringe internally. Maybe Cas didn't want any company ( _his company_ ) on his birthday, maybe Cas just wanted the day off from being around the sets 24/7 ( _or from him_ ), maybe he already planned to hit the town, see if he could get another sort of company tonight ( _that wasn’t a_ friend _)_.

_Oh, God, what if somebody was already inside and he was being a total cock-blocker right now?_

Oh fucking _God,_ why were his thoughts even going there right now?!

 _Yeah, this was definitely a bad idea_. _Abort, abort, abort._

While alarm bells were going off in his head, Dean knowing his eyes probably looked as big as saucers as he stands there and stares at Cas, rethinking his whole plan, the writer simply steps to the side to allow room for Dean to come in. His exterior all cool and suave and detached, not blinking an eye at the singer and instead remains silent.

 _Well, at least that was a ‘No’ on the cock blocking_.

Dean closes the door behind him as he makes his way inside Cas's hotel room, the space being only a little smaller than Dean's, but still having enough room for a small walk-in, fully equipped bathroom and a large bedroom that dominated the entire room. Nothing too fancy, but comfortable enough for their few days' stay before they hit the next state.

The singer follows the writer as he makes his way over to the small balcony outside where he sees the writer taking a seat on one of the two woven chairs placed there for guests to enjoy the view, not that there was much of one.

It was strange, he was used to Cas being all broody and quiet, but his silence had never felt anything but natural and comfortable. It had never felt quite like the oppressive sound of nothingness that was rolling off the man right now. Something was bothering him, Dean could tell, but even though he wanted to know what was wrong, he wouldn’t push, not if Cas didn’t want him to.

That didn’t make him any less determined to have Cas _not_ spend his birthday all by himself in this sterile, suffocating hotel room, probably with the writer binge watching whatever shit cable the hotel offered. No fucking way, he couldn’t offer much in the way of friendship, but he could give Cas somewhat of a memorable day, at least he hoped it would be considering the place the employees agreed on for their team building wasn’t quite what Dean thought was Cas’s idea of fun. But it was the only option Dean had where they wouldn’t be bothered with flashes of cameras going off around them and being followed by creepy stalkers all night.

“If you’re about to drop another one-eighty request, could you hold off until tomorrow? Unless ordering shitty alcohol from the room service menu is part of the deal, then I might be more open to persuasion,” Cas says, as he lounges back so he was facing Dean a little more from where the singers still stands half in and half out of the balcony doorway.

It was another one of those dead-pan jokes Cas seemed particularly good at delivering and not realizing whether it was a good reaction or not yet, the singer couldn’t help but laugh at that, the wide stretch of his mouth turning into a sly up-stretch of the lips as he moves to stand closer to the writer, crossing his arms as he shakes his head, replying, “‘fraid not this time, although your request for some shitty booze could very well become a reality. _If_ you agree to come with me, that is.”

Raising one dark, thick eyebrow at Dean’s once again out of the blue request, the writer looks on in pure scepticism, not trusting the playful look adorning his perfect face one bit, “Oh, and where, pray tell, am I agreeing to go with you?”

“So I’ll take that as a, ‘yes, I’ll come with you’ then?”

“I never said that.”

“No, but you did say you’re agreeing to go with me,” Dean replies, grinning in satisfaction that it was so easy to get Cas on board with going out. Before Cas can object, he starts walking back out, with his grin turning into a genuine smile as he says, “Awesome! Meet me outside my room in five minutes.”

As he steps back into the room, Cas hot on his heels as if to argue some more, Dean takes a look at his face and the complicated outfit he still had on and knowing a quick shower would probably be in order seeing as he just slathered on an absurd amount of deodorant after their rehearsal to make it in time for the rest of his appointments.

“On second thought, make that ten,” Dean says, already by the door, and spinning around to tell Cas to wear some comfy pants and shoes, the singer startles at how near Cas had been at his back.

It shouldn’t be possible with how much time they’ve spent together, but for the first time Dean can take in the dark, cinnamon and musky fragrance of the older man, mixed with something inextricably _Cas_ buried beneath.

He never gave much thought to the way people smelled, it was always a variation between good, too much perfume or people clearly needing a deodorant stick, pronto.

But standing there, taking in Cas’s surprisingly warm heat that radiated off the man, bringing with it the scent of his body had Dean pausin, taking it in as discreetly as he could. But beyond smelling really _really_ good, Dean couldn’t help the immediate thought, the immediate reaction he had that _this_ was what safety and warmth and comfort must’ve smelled like if it had a scent.

And if people could be made into homes, Cas would’ve been that daunting mansion up on a hillside, but with the hearth of the fireplace heating them up from within, the windows illuminating the dark skies and rolling hills with an orange-tinged glow, beckoning people to come closer, knowing it could provide shelter and safety and security if they dared entered.

At that absurd imagery, Dean snapped out of it, looking up only to catch Cas staring down at him, and in that moment, no matter how much Dean doubted himself, doubted his purpose and his whole fucking existence, he knew for a fact Cas had been staring at him the way Sam had told him he did when he wasn’t looking. Only this time, Dean stared back.

He was the first to break eye contact, turning around, opening the door he hadn’t even realized he had been slightly backed into and thinking of the picture they must have made if a complete stranger saw them like this.

And with a heart slamming in his chest for an entirely different reason, Dean walks out, forcing his body not to turn around, knowing he’d find Cas’s ocean blues trailing him as he makes his way down the passageway before turning the corner, making his way to his own sterile, suffocating hotel room.

**

Thank God Dean was an expert at getting himself ready at an inhuman amount of time, because almost exactly ten minutes later, he heard a soft rap on his hotel door, the singer knowing it could only be Cas.

Shoving his foot into his worn out converse sneaker, he gave himself a quick once over. Of course, only doing so to check whether he looked presentable or not.

_Yeah, of course that’s why._

For the first time in a long while he felt comfortable with wearing no cover-up, and he wore an understated plain t-shirt under his dark grey hoodie, some washed out navy jeans and his black converse sneakers he never went anywhere without.

In what must have been over a year or so, he actually looked like any random early-twenties male. There was a strange sense of relief in that, doubled by the fact that the place they were headed wouldn’t be filled with the bright flickering of cameras in his face, no swarm of people trying to touch him, pushing and shoving at each other to get even a mere glimpse of Dean Winchester so they could spend the rest of their lives telling people they met him in person.

Getting too caught up in staring in the hall mirror, mind wandering, he finally startles out of it when he hears a second, louder knock sound at the door and he hurries to open it.

He gives Cas a bright smile when he sees his grumpy expression looking none too pleased he had to leave the comfort of his room.

Looking him up and down, not even playing at being discreet about it this time, the singer can’t help but roll his eyes at the writer, because of course he couldn’t leave behind the ever-present trench coat, even though it was almost ninety-five degrees outside, the evening air lending only a warm breeze.

And the singer says as much as he makes his way back inside, going over to the king bed in the centre of the room, knowing Cas would follow, “You’re ditching the trench coat, Cas, you’re gonna be sweating your balls off if you leave in that. And besides, it’ll just ruin the gift I got you.”

“I do not see how me wearing my coat in any way hinders the point of your gift, Dean,” there was a brief pause, the singer getting the impression Cas was making that calculating expression of his, head turned up and side-ways, dark brows furrowed as the gears spin in his head, like a bird looking curiously at something.

“You got me a gift? That was quite unnecessary to do, I assure you.”

“I know, but I wanted to. Anyway, don’t get all your hopes up now, it ain’t that great a gift, didn’t exactly have time to shop or nothing,” cringing at how blasé that must sound, as if he didn’t really _care_ at all to make it special, Dean picks up the black shirt and key card, shoving both objects at Cas, a simple “Here,” following his rough display.

He could tell his face was heating up, he didn’t know if he was more embarrassed or goddamned _shy_ right at that moment, maybe a bit of both, with the deafening silence in the room, and Cas’s confused expression not helping in the least.

It was the perfect recipe for Dean’s blabbering mouth to take the opportunity to word vomit all over the silence in the room, trying to explain, “I mean, I said it wasn’t nothing special, so there ya go. That’s an all-access ID card, had it made for ya, so security won’t be giving you any hassles anymore since I know they’ve been assholes to ya this whole trip. I tried getting your name on their lists a few times, but John’s in charge of that so they wouldn’t do it long-term. But this way, you won’t even have to ask for permission, it has your name and picture on an’ everything.”

Thinking he should probably explain where the picture came from since Cas had no clue he even took it, he fiddles with his hands to give him something else to do, thanking all his lucky stars that the room had bad lighting so Cas wouldn’t see his tomato red face at this point, “I might have stalker pic’ed you the other day when you weren’t looking,” he says sheepishly.

Not wanting the writer to ask for any more details on the exact logistics of how he got that right, he swiftly moves on to the second item he shoved into Cas’s arms, the man expecting the shirt, quirking a brow at the gold and silver font at the back reading ‘Dean Winchester: World Tour’ with the words, ‘Crew Member’ written in smaller print on the front left chest side.

“I know you’ve been having some trouble going unnoticed the way you want, so you don’t have to lurk in the shadows tryna hide all the time, I mean you look uncomfortable around everybody here enough as it is. And if even I’m getting tired of people lookin’ at ya like some circus spectacle, you must be too. So I asked Sam to get the t-shirt for ya, and it’s a golf one, so you can still look all fancy. Well fancy-ish, at least. It’s the same as the rest of the crews’, so you won’t stand out as much and everybody won’t be staring at ya all the time. A few more’s coming in tomorrow, I’ll have someone bring it to your room. I mean, if you want.”

It occurred to him then that maybe the shirt idea wasn’t so bright, considering Cas wore his coat over everything, that above anything making him stand out more. And he also knew a part of the reason why he wore the coat was because of its huge pockets, hiding the pen and book and whatever else Cas carried around all day that he needed.

_You’re so fucking stupid, ya know that Dean?_

He knew the blush on his face, making him sweat just a little under his hoodie was now because of the utter embarrassment coursing through him, hands wringing for an entirely different reason. He needed to get them out of the room, and fast, before he made an even bigger fool of himself.

“Uhm, yeah, so that was it really. I mean ya don’t have to wear the shirts if ya don’t want to, I just thought…well anyway, maybe it wasn’t such a good id-”

Before he can finish the thought, Cas was placing the items on the bed, then removing his trench coat, going for the hem of his sweater before Dean’s brain got into gear when the writer was standing bare-chested in front of him, “W-what the hell’re ya doing?!”

In answer, Cas reaches for the blacktee, putting it on and smoothing the fabric down. It was a bit snug over the shoulders and arms (who the hell knew a writer could pack away so many lean, well-defined muscles), but the dark fabric against his tan skin and dark-haired features made him look even more handsome.

Goddamnit, and Dean thought his preppy, formal wear did him in already, but seems Cas generally looked good in just about anything.

_Fucking hell, I’m in real deep shit tonight._

His thoughts get derailed when suddenly he feels the soft touch of Cas’s lips on his cheek. It lasts for barely a second before the writer moves away, Dean looking up only to see his own stunned expression reflected back at him in the deep pools of Cas’s dark eyes. The kiss had been nothing but a peck, but the touch of them lingers, and the singer can’t help but place a hand there, trying to hold the feeling of those rough, chapped lips there a little longer.

Their silence is broken as Cas finally speaks, “Thank you Dean. This was…it was a very thoughtful of you,” his eyes meeting Dean’s green ones, staring as if he were seeing the singer for the first time.

At that moment, with Cas’s body heat once again invading his space, the man seemingly leaning down just a little bit, Dean knowing he was leaning that much more up too, head twisting to the side, he knew what was coming. Something deeper, something more than the soft gentle kiss Cas had given him.

And he wanted it, for the first time in years, he _wanted._

He wanted Cas’s perpetually chapped lips to scrape against his softer ones, he wanted the older man’s arms to wrap around his waist while his arms went up and circled Cas’s shoulders, hands sliding through his messy strands, mussing his hair up even more. He wanted the writer to invade his space, even though he never enjoyed it when people did that, but he didn’t think he would mind if Cas took that liberty. He wanted to feel how their bodies would be as they fit flush together, the heat permeating and growing as they got wrapped up in each other. He wanted Cas’s strong hands to stroke and scratch up and down his back, bending and arching it the way he wanted, hand coming up to cup and hold Dean’s head, moving it as he searched for the best angle to deepen the kiss, tongue probing and exploring of its own volition. He wanted Cas’s mouth to move against his, maybe not so gently anymore, wanted Cas’s tongue to join in the rougher and sloppier ministrations of completely wrecking Dean.

Most of all, he wanted to feel the stretch and burn and utter earth-shattering devastation of having Cas inside him. To know Cas was taking his own pleasure, to know that his body was something Cas could want too.

Fuck, he wanted Cas so much it scared the shit of him.

And that was exactly why he was the first to move, turning his head away, feet taking a notable step back, hand coming up to brush against his lips, to feel the phantom of a kiss that never happened as his heart beat steadily in his chest, nerve endings pulsating with the on-coming storm of desire he didn’t think he was ready to feel.

It was a long time since he hadn’t felt anything but scared and hurt and pain and anxiety and guilt and like his world was crashing around him.

And he didn’t know what to do with any of the emotions Cas was starting to make him feel. He didn’t know how to stop the want, and adoration and happiness and fucking _love_ from becoming too much and consuming him whole.

He had let love do that to him once before, and it had brought him nothing but pain and anguish and wishing he couldn’t feel a thing anymore.

“We should…we should probably get going then,” Dean says as he wraps his arms around himself, his eyes finally tracking up to look at the writer from under his eyelashes.

Cas was a stone wall at that moment. He was cold and hard and unyielding, not letting anything through.

But just as Cas seemed to get better at reading him as every day went by, Dean got even better at reading the writer’s tells that weren’t really tells at all. In that moment, Cas looked rejected and hurt and Dean couldn’t blame him for that.

_Shit, I’m ruining everything._

But the night wasn’t over yet. He could still make this a good day for Cas, just like he planned on before all this.

Unless, of course, he manages to make it worse by the end of the night, for the both of them.

**

The place was dark, everything tinged with a blue glow as neon lights lit up the place, pinks and greens and oranges zigzagged all across the walls and ceiling, right down to the patterned carpet floors and game machines, illuminating the place like one of those illusion haunted house rides at carnivals.

The neon lights competing with the bright pixels coming from the screens of the arcade machines that managed to lend a modicum of brightness to the place, although they both clearly were meant to keep up the gamer aesthetic the owners were clearly going for.

The place was buzzing with laughter and the sound of people playing ten-pin bowling as the heavy ceramic balls bounced and glided across the shiny, smoothed out wood, a crashing sound emanating as they knocked over pins. It was like stepping into the night-life of a nineties geek fantasy.

“This is so cool!” Dean couldn’t help but exclaim, body vibrating with excitement as he bounced on the balls of his feet, trying to crane his neck up high and prop himself up as his eyes tried to scan the whole arcade all at once. He should probably try harder to get to know the crew members if they chose this place as the ‘team building’ location.

“Dean!” The singer heard his name being called by a familiar voice and spotting Sam raising his hand to get their attention he grabbed onto the sleeves of Cas’s coat, walking in the giant moose’s direction by the railings separating the bowling section from the rest of the game machines.

“Dean, where exactly are we?” He heard Cas question as he leaned down so the singer could hear him over the louder noises coming from both the people and machines.

“It’s team building night, Cas, seems the crew decided to take advantage of the budget leeway and the fact that no higher ups actually care about work appropriateness. Not that I’m complaining, isn’t this awesome!? This is gonna be such a great night!” Dean looked up at him then, knowing he probably looked like a kid in a candy store getting to have the run of the place, but he couldn’t help it, he had never really been to any arcades when he was a kid himself and only saw these types of places in movies, so it was truly a dream come true.

Before Cas could reply, the expression on his face nothing but fond endurance, they reached Sam, whose smirk was firmly intact as he said, “Glad to see you two made it in one piece. And Cas, nice to finally meet you man.”

Sam followed that by sticking his hand out, Cas following suite as the two men shook hands, and Dean got the strangest feeling that they were sizing each other up, the singer placed firmly in the middle of the two men.

“Uhm, so did you need something Sam?” Dean asked, trying to break the intense moment.

Sam was the first to break the eye contact and finally broke the hand shake along with it, looking over at Dean as he responded, “Nope, just checking to see if you guys wanted to join in the next game, plenty of space for more teammates.”

Standing on his tip toes, not realizing he was using Cas to balance himself so he could look over Sam’s shoulder, Dean saw a group of familiar faces gathered in a semi-circle around one table, some hooting and hollering in an attempt to probably psych out the person getting ready to bowl.

“Uhm, no thanks, I think me and Cas are just gonna hang around for a while. Maybe later though.” Realizing it gave the wrong impression that he was practically speaking for Cas, Dean quickly followed that by turning to Cas and asking, “Unless ya wanna go do some bowling, we can totally do that too, or you can and I’ll just hang back, whatever works for you is fine by me. It’s your birthday after all.”

But Cas simply shrugged his shoulders as he gave Dean one of those rare reassuring smiles of his, “I spotted an air hockey machine over there,” the writer says as he nods in the general direction where he spotted the air hockey machines in the far back, “don’t think I’ve played since I was thirteen, maybe fourteen years old. Was actually pretty good at it if memory serves well.”

“Yeah? We’ll see about that,” Dean can’t help his own smile from forming at the out Cas gave him, and the fact that he seemed to _get_ that being here was a big deal for Dean, even if it were childish, it was the only time he could be just himself.

There were no lights, no cameras, no people screaming at him, telling him what to do, or who to be. There were no pills he had to take to get his head screwed on right to sing and perform in front of thousands of people, mind going numb and blank until all those things he felt so intensely: the pain, and anxiety and constant guilt of disappointment, all got trapped inside the glass dome of his mind.

Right now, he was excited to play some games, he was happy to be here with someone whose company he enjoyed. And tonight, they could simply be Dean and Cas, not anybody or anything else.

And that’s what they did.

Cas wasn’t joking, he completely wiped Dean out at air hockey, but Dean got him back in the multiple drag races he begged Cas to continue playing until a line had formed since they were hogging the best games out of the row of car machines.

It was surprisingly easy, being with Cas like that. Dean had thought the grumpy man he met a few weeks ago would never be up for something like playing make-believe races, or throwing colourful plastic balls into the imaginary stomach of animal figures or impressing Dean with his skills of playing good old-fashioned arcade games like Pac-man and Tekken and Street Fighter and Dean even managed to rope him into playing good old Fred Flintstone’s Memory Match.

Hours had probably gone by, people had said ‘hi’ only here and there to the singer, but for the most part they were so desensitized to his existence since they saw him on nearly a daily basis that nobody really bothered them all that much, as far as Dean could tell, they were here to have their own fun. But the night was winding down, and they had pretty much played almost every single game the arcade had to offer.

Dean was getting pretty hungry, so he steered them to the single restaurant connected to the arcade that had been teeming with employees earlier but seemed to get emptier as the night wore on. It was the standard burger and fries type of joint, the deck out back over-looking the dark waters of the ocean being the only thing making it a step above a dive bar.

“Hey, wanna sit out back for a bit, get some air?” the singer asked before he over-stepped the bounds of this night, which Dean thought was looking and feeling a lot more like a date the more he thought about it and the whole getting dinner after made it seem even more so.

Trying to gauge Cas’s reaction though, the writer didn’t look all that bothered when he nodded at the idea, so maybe it was all in his head and he was over-thinking this too much.

Dean didn’t know whether to feel more disappointed or relieved at Cas’s indifference. For all his talk about knowing Cas’s tells, sometimes the man still confounded him and threw his for a loop. Something he suspected wouldn’t change no matter how many amounts of time Dean could spend with him.

After getting their orders in the form of small red baskets filled with a mountain of fries, onions, and their cheese burgers together with their plastic cups of soda, they walked on back to the deserted deck.

The slight breeze in the air carried the tell-tale scent of the salty ocean spray, Dean already feeling the damp humidity clinging to his skin, with the soft rolling waves of the ocean enveloping the silence that settled between the two men as they ate.

He never realized how starved he actually was until the last of his fries were gone, along with all the onion rings and the cheese burger, fingers poised above the basket to grab for food that was already gone. 

Just as suddenly the singer realized he couldn’t recall his last meal, not beyond the copious amounts of caffeine and energy drinks that had been shoved his way. Sam usually made sure he got some food into his system but with all the planning for the global launch of the tour coming up sooner than anyone anticipated, Dean thought Sam hardly even managed to get some solid food into his own system, let alone having to get Dean to do something as simple as feeding himself.

His musings were soon cut-off when Cas spoke up, breaking their companionable silence, “Thank you, Dean. As unexpected as it was, this was…I had a good time tonight.”

Dean couldn’t help the pleased and self-satisfied smile that spread across his face at Cas’s comment, mentally patting himself on the back for getting something right for once.

“Yeah?” Dean questioned, knowing it sounded more like fishing than the further reassurance he was actually craving to hear.

But Cas seemed to be in an amendable mood and simply smiled, nodding in assent as he looked back out at the ocean, with Dean’s pleased grin being hidden from view as he turned himself slightly to the side, lifting his legs as he leaned his feet up against the wooden railing and slouching down to get more comfortable.

This time, he was the one to break their silence, something about being there up on that deck, listening to the soft trembling of the waves as it hit the shore in the distance jarring a strange feeling of intimacy as he reminisced, “Ya know, I think one of my earliest memories was of the ocean.”

Cas hummed, letting Dean know he was listening and prompting Dean to continue, “Yeah, my mom, she loved the ocean, used to take me out every chance she could. I remember she had one of them real old Polaroid cameras, used to run around down on the beach front forcing me to take pictures with her. She always said she looked her best when I was in the shots with her, though that was probably just her way of guilt-tripping me to not run away every time she brought it out.”

Dean stopped there, not really knowing whether he wanted to dig up memories beyond those sparse few good ones, but he didn’t really have to worry when after a few seconds rolled by Cas spoke up, “I wonder what that’s like.”

“What’s what like?”

“Having good memories of one’s mother,” Cas said, voice flat and hollow. Something about that warning Dean to take caution even as his interest was piqued. Cas never was one to share anything seriously private about himself, so this was a first.

There had always been a shameful, narcissistic part of him that thought his problems had always been bigger than the next person’s, that his life was so fucking tragic that nobody could ever hope to understand. And he knew it was one of the reasons he pushed Sam away, because what was the point of telling him about all the dark shit swirling around in his mind if there was no way someone like Sam, someone so happy and optimistic and always looking for the fucking silver lining in every situation, could truly get anything about his life.

But it was something else Cas had completely wrecked without even knowing he had, because he couldn’t completely deny the fact that the simple act of talking to Cas, having somebody who was really listening to him, with no judgement, no expectations from either of them, no weight of worrying about being a burden, it soothed something deep inside himself.

And in those moments, Dean felt as if all the built-up stress and anxiety and fear and shame and longing and fucking memories became a little quieter when he let it out during their conversations.

Still, he knew that fact only made the voice inside his mind cling tighter to all the thoughts that made him want to start those conversations in the first place. It was a catch 22.

Cas couldn’t fix him, nobody could, not even himself. It still didn’t stop him from wanting to give Cas the same thing he had given the singer in return though, a space where he could let out what the singer knew was on his mind probably the entire day, probably his entire _life._ He could be the ear-piece for a few hours, he couldn’t give much back to Cas for all he’s done for him, but he could give him this.

“Your mom not winning any mother of the year awards I take it?” Dean joked, wanting to approach this subject a little more gently and with a little more tact than he would any other topic of conversation.

Cas let out a snort in derision at that, “Not even close.”

“Didn’t get along with your parents?” Dean guessed, hopeful the conversation wouldn’t stop there.

“An understatement I would say, considering I was a foster child,” Cas said, Dean turning his head sharply at that little bit of information legs falling off of the railing with the sudden motion of concentrating his entire being on the man as his blue gaze kept staring firmly out at the open waters ahead of them.

There was something in that sentence that grabbed the singer’s attention, and he couldn’t help but follow the trail of curiosity Cas seemed to lead him on without the writer even knowing, “Did your parents…I mean are they,” Dean paused, the words sounding crude and awkward no matter how many different variations he tossed around in his head.

But Cas seemed to pick up on what he was trying to get out as the words were caught up and mangled before they could make it out of his mouth, responding to the question he was trying to get at, “No, they’re not dead,” there was a beat of silence after that revelation.

Though Dean could see Cas’s eyebrows furrowing as he seemed to think something over in his head, and eventually shaking his head, a crude smile tugging at his lips, “You know, I don’t actually know if they’re dead or not. Not that it matters I suppose, my mother never told me who my father was; I doubt the man even knows I exist to be frank.”

There was a tightening twinge that seemed to rope around his heart and all he wanted to do in that moment was go over to Cas and wrap his arms around him, try to soothe the edge of pain and grief Cas unintentionally let slip in the tone of his voice as it became a little more husky and thick, even as he sat there, stoic and unbothered as he rehashed memories he probably had no intention of ever reliving.

“And my mother, well at this point she’s just some woman that decided one day she loved her new husband and his sons more when she ran away from her five her old son at some amusement park on his birthday,” Cas huffed out an unamused breath of air before he tagged on, “Never even had the decency to drop me off at a shelter, she just left me standing there. In the cold, in the rain, actually caught pneumonia after that, first time I spent any amount of time in a hospital, and that was when CPS took me away.”

Dean swallows heavily around the ball of emotion stinging up his throat, making his eyes mist over as he heard the sordid details of something that should never happen to anyone, least of all a fucking five year old kid.

Swallowing around his suddenly dried out mouth, Dean couldn’t help but try and comfort Cas in some way, even if the words that came out were probably the most generic thing to say at that moment, “I’m sorry that happened to you Cas,” and his stupid, stupid, brain actually tried to give Cas some type of reassurance, even though the words leaving his mouth felt wrong and meaningless, “M-maybe she meant to come back and couldn’t find you or maybe she was going through something and just thought you’d be better off without her,” Dean knew that last part was more of a projection, a suggestion borne from his own need to try and understand his own mom’s actions as he got older. It was the one explanation he always clung to, wishing and praying it was why she decided to leave him behind when she wrapped that rope around her neck and tied to her bedroom’s ceiling fan. 

“I can assure you, neither of those options applies,” Cas responded, finally turning around to look straight at Dean.

“How do you know that? Maybe you’re wrong,” Dean didn’t know why he was pushing it like this, but a pit had formed in his stomach at Cas’s words, spoken so surely that it threatened to topple everything he had thought he already reconciled with.

“Because I asked her, and trust me, she had no maternal concerns plaguing her when she left me that day. She wanted a new life, and I wasn’t a part of her future plans. It was as simple as that Dean, nothing more,” Cas sais, a sharp edge of reprimand aimed at Dean, causing the singer to curl in on himself in apology.

There was a moment of tense silence, but then Cas sighed deeply, closing his eyes for a second, and when he opened them Dean could see his regret written all over his face.

“I’m sorry Dean, I didn’t mean to…” he trailed off, balling his hands into fists on the table top as he searched for a way to explain himself.

“You’re the first person to ask you know,” Cas said, looking at Dean as if he both confused and amazed the writer all at once.

“Ask what,” Dean questioned, not really knowing what Cas was getting at this time around.

“About myself, my life, my past. Everything. It’s a little difficult to talk about.”

“I know,” Dean replied, and Cas smiled at the simple truth of the words. Because Dean did know, of course he did, he’s been spilling out everything about his own self and life and past to the writer.

“Just, start at the beginning,” Dean advised, sitting patiently as he waited for Cas to muddle through his thoughts and emotions and memories until he was ready to share.

And he did, “She always wanted something more. It took me a while, but I realized that I wasn’t…I wasn’t enough for her. She used to bounce around from man to man, the next one always being Mr. Right. But eventually things would turn sour, and she’d pack us up and move out to a new home, a new life. Getting a fresh start, she’d always say.

“She got married eventually. Had the built in husband and kids she was always chasing. I don’t remember much about _before,_ not really. I remember feeling invisible, not in a ‘nobody’s paying attention to me’ kind of way, but as if I weren’t there anymore, a ghost just drifting aimlessly, an outsider looking in on this family I was not a part of. It’s why it surprised me so much that day, when she told me we were going out for my fifth birthday, just me and her. I waited for her, at the gate, she said she’d come back. But I just waited and waited and waited until eventually someone else took me away.

Bounced around from foster home to foster home, never got adopted, not that I could blame some of the families who took me in. I was…I was a real bad kid, Dean,” Just as he opened his mouth to protest, Cas raised a hand, stopping him in his tracks, “No, I was, I know I was, I made myself the problem. Always. There were a lot of bad homes I got placed in, I won’t lie about that, places where the children acted like the adults and where the adults acted like the children, where I had to fight and toughen up just to have a full belly at the end of the day. But there were a lot of good places too, families who lived in white-picket fenced homes, who looked just as nice on the outside as they were on the in, and there were some people that really tried to help the messed-up foster kid who they hoped could change with time. But I never gave them a chance, I made their lives hell because I wasn’t and never would be their kid, I was _hers_ and only hers.”

Cas took a deep breath in, rubbing a hand over his brow as if it was exhausting and painful just speaking about this, but to Dean’s surprise, when he thought he should change the subject, that it was enough, more than enough for Dean to know, the writer went on, “The day I turned eighteen I booked it, I was with a really…” this time Cas was the one to gulp, words becoming muffled as if he couldn’t stand to say what came next, “A really great lady. The grandma type you know? A jackpot foster parent for anyone lucky enough to be placed with her. Her husband died young and she had been struggling with empty nest syndrome, driving her to get some kids back into her home. Heard I was her last. And I couldn’t blame her, I purposefully made it difficult for her and the day I left I stole the money I knew she had been saving for my first semester at college, and a few pieces of family jewellery too. Just enough to get me where I needed to be.”

Cas wouldn’t look at him this time, eyes cast down at the table in remorse, but after a beat he looked up at Dean once again, as if he _needed_ him to hear this, to understand, “In all my life, that was probably my biggest regret. That I let her down; becoming exactly what she told everyone, all the teachers, and social workers and her friends and family, I wasn’t. That if they just gave me a chance, they’d see in me what she saw. That I broke her heart and probably hurt the chances of some other kid getting the help and support she would’ve given.”

“Why’d you do it?” Dean had to ask, struggling with the picture Cas was painting of himself.

“Because I thought if she couldn’t come back, if she couldn’t find me in all those years, I would go out and find her instead. And that was exactly what I did. I hired a PI with the money and used it to pay my way to get to her. Only, once I did I left out one crucial factor.”

“What was that?”

Cas looked away this time, not being able to meet Dean’s eyes as he said, “That she simply didn’t and had never wanted me. It was as simple as that Dean, she had never wanted me.”

This time Dean didn’t stop himself from reaching his hand out across the table, grabbing Cas’s larger one and holding on tightly, feeling the warm heat as Cas turned his palm up so he could grab onto Dean’s, holding on tighter, stroking his thumb across the back of the singer’s hand in a rhythmic movement, as if that small hand in his were the only thing grounding him in that moment.

Time passed by slowly, it could’ve been minutes or hours as they sat there in silence, Dean offering Cas the only comfort he knew from so far away.

He always thought that he had exhausted himself out of all the hope he had left in his lifetime, his experiences sucking and seeping it all like a monster feasting as it took and took and took until he was left empty and faithless.

But the look in Cas’s blue eyes that could rival the very ocean laid out before them, made him realize he had probably never been so devoid and emptied out of all hope and left hard and cold like Cas had been. As if this was the one truth that had been set in stone when whatever supernatural being decided the world needed a Castiel in it.

He thought himself to be unwanted and unloved.

But the singer knew with every fibre of his being that he could be the one to break that, to completely wreck and destroy and challenge everything that made Cas believe that, as surely as he knew Cas was destroying all his beliefs, all his carefully crafted barriers and walls and masks.

But just as Cas couldn’t be his home, he couldn’t be Cas’s. Where Cas was a mansion on top of a hill, cold on the outside, but so so warm on the inside, Dean was a deserted, rundown, broken structure barely being kept together, rot and festering mould covering the walls, broken glass windows offering no warmth or protection from the world.

He could admit it was a nice thought; that he could be brave enough, and strong enough to fight for this beautiful, broken and heartbreakingly cold man sitting in front of him, that he could love and protect him.

But he couldn’t.

His love and devotion was a diseased, wilted, dead thing waiting to poison anyone who touched it, and he truly pitied anyone who thought he could help or save them when he couldn’t even save himself.


	9. Chasing

_I just wanna run away_   
_Find somewhere that feels safe_   
_Find somewhere the bad days_   
_Don't come as often in this sad phase_   
_Somewhere I can be alone_   
_Where I don't have to run away from my flaws_   
_And I don't have to be afraid of my thoughts_   
_With this high, this high that I've been chasing_

_-NF ft. Mikayla Sippel, Chasing_ (Demo)_

He had freckles.

Funny, Castiel didn’t think he had ever seen them before this night. They were splattered all over the bridge of his nose and across his cheeks, like little golden dust flakes, a mark of youth that would forever remain and bloom in the heat of the summer sun.

The Golden Boy.

It was moments like this when Castiel simultaneously remembered and forgot who Dean Winchester really was.

He was a Star, someone so unbelievably untouchable to mere men like himself, meant only to exist in dreams and fantasies, love and devotion only ever being able to go on unrequited and unrecognized. He was the picture of pure desire and worship and ultimately, unattainability.

Yet, at the same time, here Dean was, a mere man himself, made of flesh and blood and bones, nothing remotely ethereal or otherworldly, with lush green eyes, bright with mirth, smiling back at him every so often as the night wore on. That warm gaze aimed at _him_ , as if Castiel were the only other person in the world, the only person that _mattered_. Dean’s unchecked emotions revealing his own affections and desire, a perfect, synchronised reflection of Castiel’s own, as they were drawn to the surface through every accidental touch, every word spoken secretly, the noise of their surroundings offering a convenient excuse for intimacy to blossom between the pair as the night wore on.

Seems the writer failed, and miserably at that, to keep that already tenuous balance he had tried to maintain between the pair. He couldn’t lie to himself anymore, couldn’t hide and pretend that anything and everything between them was just business, him doing his job, the job Dean wanted from him. This was so much bigger than that, and he knew Dean knew that too, probably knew since the moment Castiel had tried kissing him earlier that night, which just added to his confusion about Dean’s own actions and feelings he was making so obvious as the night wore on.

Castiel had always thought he was incapable of being loved, so utterly ruined and marred by life that he didn’t think _he_ could even love anyone else either. But here he was, the man beside him having set something alight in him, something so soft and gentle and fond and so utterly beautiful that he couldn’t believe it was his own body, his own soul that could conjure up emotions to feel this way, that he, out of the billions of people in this world deserved and was trusted so much to hold and protect something so vulnerable and precious.

It was strange, this sudden realization, this epiphany, that loving somebody wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him, that he wasn’t rendered weak and helpless and incapable by not holding it all inside himself.

After his mom sent him away, for the second time, he had locked his feelings, the very essence of himself away, never wanting to open himself up to the opportunity of letting someone in only to be utterly crushed when they decided to desert him again, leaving him broken and alone and hurt

He had thought it would take a lot for someone to burrow and make a place inside his heart, for him to allow himself to love anybody again, but surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly) loving Dean was the easiest thing in the world.

But perhaps this was all simply in his head too: the looks, the gestures, the intimacy of their time spent together, maybe whilst Castiel had been profoundly changed by it all, Dean had not been.

The rejection in Dean’s hotel room had been evidence enough to that fact.

He thought that was why it was easier opening up to Dean, all those long-ago stories tasting like acid, scorching and tearing at the tender, soft flesh of his throat as they made their way out of his mouth, the words bubbling and bubbling to the surface, until even he was surprised at how much he had said. Still, Castiel thought they were probably easier to get out than the ones he wanted, _needed_ , to say to Dean.

A small, self-destructive part of him took pleasure in letting out all the dark, sordid memories he had never bothered to share with anybody else, letting Dean realize he wasn’t the haloed angel coming to rescue him.

He was damaged, scarred in a way that could never be fixed, broken to the ultimate point of no conceivable repair; someone sooner worthy of being unloved than saved.

But, another new, unknown part of himself that had somehow managed to let this green-eyed creature into his life, let him burrow and settle under his skin without his know-how, that had unselfishly, unintentionally and unconditionally given his heart away with no promise, no expectation of reciprocity, had told Dean all those sordid things because as much as Dean wanted to be known, to be _seen_ , so did Castiel.

_I’m in love with Dean Winchester._

The thought, by all logical accounts, should’ve scared him shitless. But it didn’t. The words felt more like an anchor now, as if he had been adrift all his life, lost and confused and alone, and suddenly he wasn’t anymore.

And it was enough. Loving Dean was enough.

He didn’t need Dean to save him, not from a past that couldn’t change, not from all those bad memories that he kept locked away inside him. All his life he had thought he had become too cold, too distant from a humanity he couldn’t hope to recognize anymore, couldn’t relate to. He had thought having somebody that loved him was the key, the thing that could bridge the gap that kept on growing and growing and growing with each passing year because he never bothered to let anyone in enough to care.

But he was wrong, he knew now. It was being able to love somebody else that was this _thing_ that eluded him, slipped out of his reach for all these years. Until now that is.

He had thought he loved his mother, but how could he really, truly say that? She was a stranger to him now and perhaps then too, somebody he barely knew. After he had met her all those years ago, she had shattered him.

He thought he loved her, truly and unconditionally, as any child would their parent, and he thought she had loved him, as any parent should their child. It was the simple, most basic natural order of things. But that was just it; he loved her because he thought he had to and if he couldn’t love her and she didn’t love him, how could he hope to be normal, be like everyone else who had a family that made them happy. And that was it really; he just wanted to be happy, nothing more, nothing less.

And in those years of being lost to her, he had built up an image of her in his mind, an image of how he thought she _was,_ how he thought she should’ve been, all the love he had in himself, all the love he could possibly create moulded to this image of the woman with golden hair and a soft voice and loving touch.

But that was all it ever was, an image, an idea of a mother he had missed, had lost and wanted desperately to find again. And after, when the cracked, dirty wooden door of her home had slammed shut in his face, as he wondered the cold streets that night, having nowhere to go, he realized he had already found a mother in the form of a sweet, gentle old lady who had taken in the messed up teenager he was and really tried harder than any person before to change his life.

But by then he had fucked her over so badly, so cruelly, throwing the love she had so freely given in her face, and as much as he wanted to that night, huddled down and alone in some dirty alleyway, the shame had grown too big for him to ever go back to her.

And with Dean staring back at him, so much understanding and not a trace of judgement in those mossy green eyes as he let the writer hold his hand in his, anchoring him and supporting him, Castiel started to wonder whether she would’ve understood his actions too. Whether he should expend his efforts on finding _her_ this time, someone more worthy of that image he still loved and held so dearly to his heart, no matter how deep deep deep down he had buried the notion of ever having a mother who loved him.

There was a lot Castiel could say to Dean up there on that deck, but looking in those green eyes, there was already so much compassion, reassurance and an offering of so much strength and comfort that he knew he didn’t need to say anymore.

**

A silence had fallen over the pair as they made their way back to the hotel. It wasn’t the tense sort, but it wasn’t the comfortable sort either. Instead, it was the expectant sort, the deafening quiet stretching and stretching and stretching, as if even the very air around them was waiting for something, _anything_ to happen.

Castiel had no idea what it was that he was supposed to be doing though, and as they reached his door, he still had none.

But at least he knew the general social etiquette of at the most thanking someone after they had went out of their way to make sure he wasn’t alone and stuck watching cable TV on his birthday. So he turned to face the singer, intending to do exactly that as he said, “Thank you Dean. You…” the writer paused not knowing what phrase of gratitude he wanted to say, and after a beat he simply went with the most honest response, “You didn’t have to do any of this, but I appreciate all you’ve done for me tonight. As pathetic as it sounds, this was probably the best birthday I’ve had in all my twenty-six years.”

The last part came out dry and almost sheepish sounding, but instead of Castiel being the one to blush at the statement, the writer saw the deep red hue spread on the singer’s proud face as he beamed up at him, his smile infectious as Castiel felt his own lips twitch to the side in a small smile of his own.

“Don’t mention it Cas, I…I had a really great time too.”

They stood there, facing each other with Castiel’s back to the door, the writer unable to take his eyes off the other man and this time his hand didn’t hesitate like it had before as it seemed to move of its own free will.

He never knew what he intended to do, not until the pads of his fingers brushed ever so lightly over the constellation of freckles dotting the now rosy apples of Dean’s left cheek bone. The touch was soft, a gentle caress Castiel himself didn’t think he was capable of, but there he was, out in the open hallway of some hotel, mesmerised and completely taken by surprise at the sudden flare of desire that coursed through him, this all because of a simple, barely there touch.

Castiel could feel Dean go completely still, eyes wide as they zeroed in on the man in front of him, body heat slowly merging as they unconsciously stepped closer, while Castiel’s ocean blues couldn’t seem to help but roam over the singer’s naked face, looking so different than it had before; more boyish and youthful without the cover of make-up.

“I never knew you had freckles,” Castiel’s voice sounded out without his consent, whispered words meant only for Dean to hear as his eyes settled on the spots he seemed to be so enamoured by.

“Y-yeah,” came Dean’s stupefied response as his heart raced, eyes fluttering and face flushing hot and red as he felt the tender, tingling caress of the writer’s slightly dry fingers brush the sensitive slopes of his skin.

They stood there a moment longer, caught up in the intimacy of the scene before Castiel finally met Dean’s eyes, only then realizing the liberties he had taken after the singer had made it perfectly clear this wasn’t what he wanted earlier that night, not from Castiel anyway.

And this time, it was the writer who pulled away, taking a notable step back, brow furrowing at his own forwardness while Dean stood there, staring back at the older man, suddenly comprehending the amount of hurt he inflicted on the writer only hours before as he felt the same strong stab of rejection in his core.

Castiel’s heart seemed to slow down, pulsing a slower beat along with the suddenly tense moment that stretched on further than what it should have, the only thought in his head being that he ruined everything, again. Only this time going beyond what was fixable, what could be forgotten and brushed off as nothing more than a misstep.

As Castiel was thinking about ways to somehow rectify the situation, Dean had the strangest epiphany, a sense that if he never did anything now, if they both turned away, going back to their hotel rooms, separately, this would be it. The end of a _what could be_ for them. A crucial life changing chance missed. And if he made that choice, that decision to turn away, he knew it would be his life’s biggest regret, something he would punish himself forever for if he never took what he, what _they_ , truly wanted.

Dean knew the ball was firmly in his court now. Cas had already made his decision back in the singer’s hotel room all those hours ago, his gentle caress only making it clearer what his decision was. And now it was his choice to make, this step, whatever happened between them from here on out, it was all up to him. And he needed to make up his mind about what he wanted this between them to be before Cas went through that door alone.

“Dean…I’m so sor-” Castiel started to say, but before he could get the apology completely out, in an instant Dean closed the space between them, leaning up slightly as he pressed his lips to the writer’s.

And just like that the scale had been tipped, losing its balance, the writer and singer knowing there wasn’t anything remotely professional about them anymore. This was more than some job for Castiel, more than Dean wanting a favour, wanting an escape.

Castiel was too shocked to react straight away; the kiss not registering to his slowed down, confused and frazzled brain cells. Strangely, it wasn’t the feel of soft lips brushing over his in a chaste kiss that broke him from his stupor, instead it was the feel of Dean’s arms coming up to wrap around his neck, gentle, but firm fingers carding through the small hairs on the nape of his neck, the unexpected touch inducing a swift, desire fuelled sensation to course throughout his body, only to be followed by the feel of all of Dean as his whole body came into contact with Castiel’s own, pressing himself flush against the writer.

_Dean Winchester is kissing me._

Just as the thought popped into his head, he could feel how Dean’s lips became more hesitant, more tentative to the unresponsive lips beneath his own and slowly, in increments he began to pull away.

_Fuck that._

It was all it took. Before the singer could completely move away, Castiel pushed his own body that much closer to Dean’s, hand moving to wrap around his waist, making Dean arch into him, his free hand coming up to the side of Dean’s jaw, his thumb applying the slightest amount of pressure on his chin to angle the singer’s head so he could deepen the kiss.

_Finally._

It was the only barely-coherent thought Castiel could manifest as they kissed and kissed and kissed, right there in the middle of the passageway, neither one caring at all, even though they definitely should’ve.

There was no slow build-up; no careful, cautious exploration and soft gestures leading to more. They had been dancing around each other for what felt like an eternity; this moment prolonged only that much more by Dean’s fears and doubts. And Castiel’s too.

But now they each knew what they wanted, where they stood in this strange and wonderful and beautiful and heart achingly fragile relationship and it was enough. For the both of them.

There was something exhilarating and humbling and all-consuming about having Dean this way, getting to be the one to feel the pliant softness of his body as the singer slowly let Castiel take more control of the situation. Getting to feel those fingers card through his hair ever-so gently as their lips brushed over and over and over again.

Their chaste kisses could’ve been enough, but there was a craving, a hunger and instinctual drive for _more,_ from the both of them.

Dean let out a surprisingly wanton moan when Castiel nipped slightly at the now swollen flesh of that maddeningly seductive bow-shaped upper-lip, which the older man couldn’t help but focus all his ministrations on, but wanting to explore the wet, slick cavern of his mouth as he allowed his tongue to coax and lick over the singer’s mouth.

At the sharp sting to his already tender lips, Dean opened up for the writer, allowing him access to all he could give at that point, and Castiel gladly slipped his tongue into the warm, slick heat of the younger man’s mouth, tasting and exploring and utterly consuming him.

Their breathing became harsh and jagged as neither moved to part for much air, Dean not being able to help the strangled gasp he let out at the contradiction of chapped lips scraping against the seams of his mouth, only for the burn to be soothed away by the slick wetness of Cas’s tongue, feeling Cas’s thumb move to the corner of his mouth, pressing down so Dean could open up wider for him, the kiss getting deeper and sloppier the longer it went on.

At the invitation to make his own exploration as Cas retreated from Dean’s wet heat, the singer never hesitated in delving deep to get to that cinnamon and honey flavour of the man, moaning out as their tongues tangled and moved against each other as he did so.

But his exploration never lasts too long. For once, this wasn’t his show, and he couldn’t help but love how deliciously sweet giving up his tightly clasped control was. How completely gone with arousal he was when the hand that was wrapped around his waist comes up and cups the back of his neck, only for Cas to tilt his head to the side, exposing the tender flesh of his throat as the writer breaks their kiss, Dean’s already cracked voice strangling out a moan of protest, only for him to groan loudly when he feels those chapped lips nipping and sucking and laying sweet kisses all over the sides of his neck and down lower, hands moving his collar to the side to expose more of his skin to Cas’s hungry mouth.

It all left Dean one panting, shaking and flushed mess, but one sharp nip to the space where his shoulder and neck met had him gasping out, a mixture of pain and pleasure taking over as a delicious shiver ran through him, yet at the same time it had him pulling Cas’s mouth away with a slight tug of his hand that was still curled in his hair, the writer moving easily away.

“C-cas, no marks, ‘kay?” Dean managed to get out between the deep breathes of air he was taking, knowing the request probably came out a bit too late with how foggy his mind had gone, resting his forehead on the writer’s shoulder, hoping to get his body under control, though an impossible feat as he still stood chest to chest with Cas, feeling the man's hand stroking gently through the strands of his hair, the touch so different from the wild, hungry touches he had experienced only moments before.

Castiel bent his head, his breath fanning warm and moist as he whispered in Dean’s ear, “No marks, I promise,” he paused a moment before asking, “Do you want to stop?”

There was a wildness in the writer at that moment, he could feel it. Something clawing and brewing inside waiting to come out, with all of it, all of _him,_ wanting the man in front of him so damned much it hurt.

Dean thought about that for a moment. He thought about ending it here, going back to their rooms and calling it a night. But before he even realized he had made a decision he was shaking his head at the absurdity of stopping now.

“No, I don’t want to stop Cas,” he spoke softly as his hand moved of its own accord, laying it on the writer’s jaw, feeling the stubble under his palm and fingertips as he rubbed his the pad of his thumb along Cas’s cheekbone, same as the writer had done.

He was mesmerized with how unfairly handsome the man was with those piercing blue eyes and dark, sharp features that made him so so weak in the knees when he wasn’t prepared for Cas’s dominating presence.

There was a tenderness to the moment, to the action of Dean’s hand cupping his cheek as his thumb stroked along the harsh planes of his face, applying pressure to the back of Cas’s head so he could lean down more, closing his eyes as their foreheads touched.

Nobody had touched Dean this way before, as if he were something precious, something _more_ , and something not so utterly out of reach that they were too scared to go near him. But he was just like everyone else; he wanted those touches, those kisses and sweet moments. His whole life, all he ever wanted was to be loved.

And now here Cas was, with his stupidly blue eyes and big soft hands caressing him, arms embracing him as he folded Dean into the contours of his body, letting Dean rest his head against his chest, hearing the strong beat of his heart underneath his clothes as the singer moved his own arms underneath Cas’s trench coat, hugging him back and soaking up all the heat Cas was radiating.

He had always wondered, from the moment up on that rooftop to the night he asked Cas to write his story, what it was about the writer that drew him to the man, why he chose to trust Cas the most, why he chose to share his secrets with this cold, unresponsive person. And now he knew. Cas made him feel safe.

Simple really, but it was enough. That was the first thing, and after the comfort of that feeling, so foreign and new, Dean’s heart, embarrassingly easy, followed along.

“Hey, Cas?” Dean said, voice muffled by the material of Cas’s coat as he kept his head on the man’s chest, not wanting to move away just yet.

“Yes Dean?” came Cas’s response, his own voice soft as he kept stroking along the singer’s back, cheek resting comfortably on his head.

“Would it be okay if I lo-if I liked you?” Dean stumbled over his words as they were spoken almost shyly, raising his head to stare at the man, gold-green meeting ocean blue as their eyes met.

 _“Would it be okay if I loved you?”_ was what he really wanted to say, but he thought maybe, after one kiss (well, several kisses actually) it was too soon to voice that little bit of information. He didn’t even know if he was okay with that fact just yet, all things considered, but liking Cas could be enough.

There was a long pause after his question, longer than Dean would like but he was determined to wait it out, not pulling away as he saw Cas’s thoughts whirring in his mind as his eyes flickered and sparked.

And after, Dean saw the slightest half-smile tug at Cas’s lips, the first truly genuine one he had seen the man make, and before he knew it Cas had drawn him into another kiss, eyes closing of their own accord as the writer’s lips brushed oh-so gently over his.

But it never went further than that before the older man moved away, pressing his forehead once again to Dean’s as he finally responded, “Fuck, I like you too Dean.”

Dean’s heart seemed to stutter in his chest at that, Cas’s answer making him brave enough to ask the next question that was lodged and drifting in his mind since he told Cas he didn’t want to stop, “Hey Cas?”

“Yes Dean?”

“Can you invite me into your room now?”

This time, there was no beat of silence that stretched on, there was only Cas’s blue eyes landing on his green ones, Cas stepping out of their embrace and turning around, facing his room door as he swiped his key card, and finally turning back to the singer as he stood there in the hallway, robbed of the heat Cas had been providing.

But it all came rushing back as Cas stretched his arm, holding his hand out for Dean to take, as he asked, “Would you like to come inside Dean?”

And this time, it was Dean’s turn to smile, placing his hand in Cas’s, feeling the heat return as he laced their fingers together, squeezing Cas’s hand just slightly as he responded, “Yeah Cas, I’d like to. Very much.”

And maybe, just maybe, they both knew they were still lying to themselves, to each other. The love they had growing between them wouldn’t ever settle for their _‘enough’s’_ , it was a hungry and needy and demanding kind of love, an all-consuming and out of control emotion that they both had fallen so freely and willingly into. And they had to decide whether it was worth saving or whether they had to let it go after they had no more secrets to tell.


	10. If You Want Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end notes for specific trigger warnings within this chapter. 
> 
> You know yourself best, so please do read with caution❤️
> 
> \-------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Sometimes I think back to the old days  
In the pointless conversations with the old me  
Yeah, back when my momma used to hold me  
I wish somebody woulda told me_

_If you want love, you gon' have to go through the pain  
If you want love, you gon' have to learn how to change  
If you want trust, you gon' have to give some away  
If you want love, if you want love_

_-NF, If You Want Love (Perception)_

_He was four when he got his first bruise. Not by accident._

_He couldn’t remember how it happened; he couldn’t remember what he did wrong that had made dad so angry, so disappointed that he needed to correct his misbehaviour like that._

_But he remembered how it felt, how the pain had radiated from the pale, soft skin of his cheek where the physical evidence of it bloomed from red, to blue to a garish yellow. The fear had been planted for the first time then, black poisonous rot penetrating his young heart, affecting his every move, his every word, his every thought, spreading and nestling itself in the marrow of his bones, digging deeper into the malleable give of his impressionable mind, where it stayed for the next twenty years of his life._

_He remembered going to his mom, who had sunk so far down into her own despair that she could hardly comfort him, could hardly protect him from a man she had thought she loved and who she had thought loved her back. Still, she was soft and sweet and caring, and told him that she loved him (even when in the end, that love wasn’t enough, a blunt truth that destroyed both mother and son), and that angels were watching over him._

_And he loved her as fiercely as his tiny, young body could, doctoring her own bruised face as she did his, vowing that he could protect her. That he would protect her._

_He was six, when he failed her, finding her lifeless body dangling and swaying from the fan in her bedroom._

_Hugging her bare feet as he tried to get her down, tugging and tugging, screaming for somebody to help him until his voice had given out. Nobody had come for a long time afterwards, the big house still and quiet, desolate in its mourning, the only witness to the horror that had taken place amongst its walls._

_He was twelve when he had his first panic attack. When the anxiety and stress finally won out, when he didn’t have the energy to pretend anymore, when the first of those well-crafted masks started to crack._

_Heart pounding, palms sweaty, breaths coming in short bursts, but trying to keep as quiet as possible as he crouched down on the dirty linoleum floors of the motel bathroom. He didn’t want dad to find him, not like this. Dad told him he needed to toughen up, and right then he knew he looked like a weak little bitch throwing a fit at the mere prospect of doing his first live performance in front of a puny crowd of people._

_He had actually made it through the competition though, even got into the top three. And he was so fucking proud of himself, he had conquered his fears and made it through, and fuck, dad would be so proud too, he had thought._

_But he never won._

_And dad wouldn’t tolerate a loser as a son. He made that very clear when they got back that night. Dean curled in a ball on the dirty carpet as he felt dad’s version of love being inflicted upon his fragile flesh with the leather strap of a belt, just taking it and taking it and taking it, until finally he couldn’t feel anything anymore, white noise taking over as he sank deeper and deeper into that place that offered safety and escape._

_He would try to find that place again and again for years to come when things got really bad, sometimes finding it, sometimes reality keeping him stuck, keeping him trapped with its razor-sharp claws, squeezing and squeezing around his throat until he couldn’t breathe, making him live through it all._

_He was fifteen when he realized his dad didn’t love him. Not really, not the way a parent was supposed to love their child._

_But he thought that if he only worked hard enough at it, if he did what John asked of him, made him proud, his dad could learn to love him, just like he loved John. Because, unlike John’s, Dean’s love was unconditional. Maybe that was his Achilles heel. It was why he promised himself never to let anybody else in._

_He didn’t think he could handle the same hurt and torment of loving somebody who never loved him back. He didn’t think he had any more to give if he had to fight for it like he already so desperately was._

_He was eighteen when he thought life would be easier if he just didn’t have to live it anymore._

_He thought he was supposed to be happier; he had gotten everything he ever wanted, right? He was rich and fucking famous. He had it all. People envied him, wanted to be him, he had reached the peak of human success. He should be grateful._

_But he just felt bruised and broken and alone. His life passed on without him, and it was hard to find meaning in it anymore._

_He was nineteen when he managed to get his hands on a bottle of sleeping pills without anybody knowing about it._

_Keeping it safely tucked away inside the bag he always had with him wherever he travelled, on hand whenever he found the chance to use them._

_When that opportunity finally came though, he screwed it up._

_Like some big cosmic joke he was an idiot to, what was supposed to be, his very end. They made it look so easy on TV, just pop some of the pills and he was guaranteed a nap that would last forever. He didn’t think to look up how much pills he needed to take to make his heart stop, didn’t think how fast-acting the ones he had already swallowed were, the drowsiness over-taking him, making him slow and sluggish, passing out before he could swallow down some more._

_The real kick was the fact that nobody had even been looking for him, that when he finally woke up, some hours later, he’d be alone and cold, shivering on the tiled-floor of some random hotel spot his dad chose for them to spend a few days at between gigs._

_Nobody even knew about that first time._

_He was twenty-one when he tried again._

_His life was supposed to be even better than it was before._

_But it wasn’t._

_He was living in constant pain, in constant fear, all the damned time. And this time, John wasn’t the sole cause of it all anymore. He loved playing music, but this wasn’t what he had wanted for himself. The spot light, the interviews, the strangers, the cameras, the fact that his life was no longer only his to live. He had thought all he needed was time to adjust, but year by year, it all just got so much worse. And he didn’t think he could handle much more._

_His mind had been warring with him for so long, those dark thoughts that had him sinking under further and further, relentless in their onslaught._

_And he was too weak to face everything, he had tried fighting, had been fighting for a long time, but he couldn’t be strong all the time, and he just wanted the pain to be gone._

_He just wanted everything to stop._

_He at least had enough forethought to take the ol’ knife to the wrist route. A sure-fire way to get the job done._

_But by this point, failure just seemed an inevitable part of his life. It was the first time he realized how truly pathetic he was when not even Death seemed to want anything to do with him._

_He never thanked Sam for saving his life that day. What terrified him most was that he didn’t think it would really be a genuine thanks, but a courtesy more than anything._

_That tiny hope in him that hadn’t been snuffed out yet vowed that if he ever uttered those words to Sam, it would be for the right reasons, he deserved that much at least._

_He was twenty-two when he fell in love with an angel._

_Cas, with his deep ocean blue eyes and raven hair and deep, scratchy voice. Cas, who saw right through him, saw all his broken parts, and still seemed to want him. Who decided that he was worth sharing his story with, who trusted him enough with that part of himself._

_Cas, the man who made him so goddamned happy it hurt sometimes, because this wasn’t his life, this wasn’t how things were supposed to go, his life had never been a fairy tale, and he was scared that this wasn’t real._

_Cas, who terrified him, who made him question all of those careful plans he had, because, third time’s the charm right?_

_Those dark thoughts were relentless though, whispering that he wouldn’t be enough for Cas, that maybe Cas wouldn’t be enough for him either, how devastating it would be for the angel to realize he couldn’t watch over him anymore, couldn’t protect him in the end, not like his mother had promised they would._

_So really, ending his story sooner would be the right thing to do, for the both of them._

_And he thought, maybe, if he got a chance at a next time things could be different for them. He would be a happier and healthier person, somebody more worthy of Cas’s love and affection._

_He wouldn’t be so fragile and broken and tainted. He’d be whole for Cas._

_Next time, they’d get to have that fairy tale romance with its happy ending instead of this fucked-up tragedy they were living through right now._

_And all he’d have to do for that second chance was pull the trigger._

_But until then, he’d try and bottle up all the moments they had together, treasuring them, letting them keep him safe and warm for as long as he could._

_**_

Fuck, he couldn’t seem to stop kissing the man. Or maybe it was Cas who couldn’t stop kissing him, drawing Dean back every time, trailing his lips down his neck when the singer had to separate to get some much needed air back into his lungs, making his way back to Dean’s mouth once he deemed he had been parted from them long enough _._

Cas was a little more dominant than Dean had expected, and the singer was a little more _yielding_ than he had anticipated. But fuck, everything felt so good. Cas’s hands sliding along his sides as he kept him trapped against the door, the pair not even having made it properly into the room before they were on each other, trading frantic kisses, with hands more daring in their explorations this time around.

Cas was a looming presence over him, and Dean was a vocal mess, moaning and whimpering as pulses of pleasure kept him on the edge. He knew once they came together it would be intense, but fuck, this was something else, more akin to an explosion that had erupted, heat building and bubbling until they were both suffocated under the pressure.

But fuck if he didn’t want this feeling to never go away. Cas wanting him sent a pleasant thrill through the singer, who couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact. Still, it lit up something else in him besides the burning desire, something sweeter, gentler and more beautiful. Just as intense, but in a different way, wanting to be let out too, and Dean knew what that was, and he also knew he wasn’t doing the best job in keeping it from showing just then, not with the way he was clinging onto Cas, not with the way he was pouring every single thing he wasn’t able to say in the reverent way his hands smoothed over the man's body.

His musings were derailed when he let the loudest moan yet escape through his parted lips, “Shit, Cas, wouldn’t’a pegged ya for a biter,” Dean gasped out when the writer started mouthing at the area just below his ear, a spot he never even realized was so sensitive until Cas’s teeth scraped over the skin, not hard enough to leave a mark, but definitely enough so Dean could feel the slight harsh burn before Cas’s lips quickly soothed away the sting _._

“Hmm, with the filthy sounds you’re making at being bitten we’re clearly a good match then,” Cas responded, his own voice sounding a lot more as if he was pushing ten packs of cigarettes a day with the deep rough rasp it had going on.

_Fuck that fucking voice_ , Dean thought as his mind blanked for just a second, a pulse rushing through him, but managing to stop himself from climbing the man like a tree. But just barely.

They were so so close, bodies plastered against each other, but with the only light coming in being that from the open curtains of the sliding door, Dean couldn’t make out much of Cas’s features, though he’d been sneaking looks at the man so often it wasn’t hard to picture the expression on Cas’s face right then; that arrogant arch of one dark brow together with that fucking smirk of his, clear indications that he knew he was right, and he knew that Dean knew he was right.

_Bastard._

Realizing he didn’t really have any grounds to dispute the writer’s observation, not really _wanting_ to anyway, since he did, in fact, like it, a whole fucking lot, and hoped Cas would heavily indulge in the act as the night wore on, the singer simply rolled his eyes, then let a smirk of his own grace his lips as he decided to use the writer’s words to his advantage, “Maybe we should move this to the bed then, don’t’cha think?”

Though, it seemed as if Cas were in the habit of constantly surprising Dean tonight as he was completely taken off guard when the writer swooped down, lips covering his. It was a swift, yet deep and hungry kiss before he took one of the singer’s hands in his own as he stepped back, leading Dean further into the room, however not before saying, “Fuck, yes, let’s do that.”

**

He felt warm. Castiel couldn’t remember the last time he felt this way, if he even ever did. It came from somewhere deep inside him, the warmth, a budding heat that bloomed, leaving no room for that cold, distant nothingness as it radiated out, touching every part of himself, every single corner and crevice, leaving the writer feeling as if he were being drugged, left to ride out this intense high.

He never expected the night to go this way, never imagined that even after their kiss (their wonderful, explosive, mind-numbing kiss) they would end up here, with Dean spread out on his bed as the writer hovered over him, cradled in the space between the singer’s gorgeous bow-shaped legs.

Both of them were still fully clothed, trading lazy, indulgent kisses back and forth for what must have been the past hour, Castiel’s hands having found their way under Dean’s t-shirt as he stroked his skin, while Dean’s arms couldn’t seem to leave their position from around his shoulders as his hands moved all over; tangling in his hair, making it even messier than it usually was, smoothing down towards the nape of his neck, and across his back, the singer delighting in the flex of Cas’s muscles at every new spot he touched.

The room was still cast in darkness, Castiel not having given a thought to switch on even the bed-side lamp, not when after getting into the room, in a matter of seconds he had had Dean up against the room door, only to end up horizontal a few minutes later. And fuck, was this so much better. Not that their earlier moments hadn’t been driving him completely crazy, but positioned like this, Castiel not being able to help the steady and instinctual drive of his hips, Dean arching up into him with every grind down, he could feel _all_ of the younger man, and he knew the singer could feel his own very obvious arousal too. It wasn’t enough to get him beyond half-mast, but fuck, the build-up was just as sweet.

Still, he needed to know how far Dean wanted this to go, the writer was perfectly content with simply lying here, and kissing Dean all night long if that was what he wanted. But if that was all, then his body would definitely need a breakaway for a minute to calm itself down, before he did something as embarrassing as coming in his pants like some prepubescent boy who had no control whatsoever over his libido.

Breaking away from their kiss, Castiel smiling indulgently as he made out the disappointed frown on Dean’s pouting face when he couldn’t draw the writer back in. He tried smoothing away the slight crease between his eyebrows with the pad of his thumb, the action seeming to placate Dean as he stared up at Castiel, all big green eyes and soft lips that just made the older man want to dive back in for another taste, but he had to know first, “How far do you want this to go tonight Dean?”

“What do ya mean?” Dean asked a bit obtusely, but Castiel could understand, what with his mind being just as clouded over with all that was happening.

He then decided it was probably best to be as blunt as he could, diving straight to the point as he leaned in, “I would very much like to fuck you right now Dean,” he whispered, causing an imperceptible shiver to run throughout the young man’s body, the writer feeling the tensing of his muscles before he seemed to melt back down into the mattress.

The positive reaction to his words excited Castiel so much he couldn’t stop the shift of his own hips as he thrust them down, much harder than he had before. This time though, instead of rubbing against Dean’s own jean-clad erection, he found himself grinding a bit lower, his point being very much obviously made with the motion of his clothed cock grinding sharply against the singer’s ass.

The sensual action had dual moans escaping both their lips, but this was all very much counterproductive to the writer’s goal, so he slid his hands down until they were each grabbing a hold of his hips until he had the younger man pinned to the bed, effectively stopping Dean’s now frantic motions so they could both calm down a little.

“Shit, what’re ya doing to me Cas?” Dean asked as he stared, with round almost shocked eyes at the older man, whose entire body weight was holding his own down, trapping him in the most delicious way possible, forcing his body to yield to his commands, and damn if that wasn’t fucking hot, riling him up just that much more.

Castiel raised a brow up in question, realizing that there was definitely something here worthy of further exploration, but that would have to be left for another time, right now they wouldn’t last too long, and Castiel desperately wanted to be inside Dean before that happened, if the singer was willing of course. Though by his non-verbal cues, he was more than open to the idea at the very least.

“What do you want Dean?” Castiel prompted, shifting his head as he leaned down to cover Dean’s lips, slowly moving his own against the singer’s, his tongue following not long after to dip inside and get another taste of him, biting softly at the over-sensitive flesh before he broke the kiss.

“I could spend all night kissing you, if you want me to, or,” he paused, minutely shifting his hips in a more rhythmic manner, moving Dean’s in tandem, forcing their clothed erections to rub against each other in a slow, filthy grind, the writer knowing that they both could definitely come from this alone.

As he moved their bodies he whispered, “I could make us come, just like this. Or,” Castiel emphasised as he dragged out the ‘r’, letting go of Dean’s hips, moving his hands down until they effectively cupped the globes of the singer’s ass, bold as ever as he squeezed them gently, letting his knees slide further down the bed before he drove his hips up, a lewd and forward display as he pantomimed fucking into Dean. It caused a spike of arousal to shoot through him at both the suggestion and at hearing the slight hitch to the singer’s breath, “I could fuck you so good, make you feel me everywhere, make you feel me for _days_ after this. Choose your pick sweetheart.”

“Shit, _fuck!_ ” Dean wailed, not really sure if it was because of the absolutely filthy words coming out of his prim and proper writer or because apparently he had a thing for pet names. He couldn’t help surging up then, taking Cas’s mouth this time, his kiss a lot sloppier and uncoordinated than Cas’s had been, but what the fuck ever, at this point he didn’t care how desperate he looked or sounded, he wanted this man, and he wanted him so damn badly he couldn’t fucking wait anymore.

“Everything, I want everything Cas, want you kissing me, want you pinning me down, want you fucking me until I can’t fucking walk, wanted you inside me for goddamned _weeks._ Please, Cas, please, want you,” Dean pleaded, not moving very far from the older man’s mouth as he spoke.

In a flash Cas was off of him, standing at the foot of the bed as Dean lay there, not knowing what was happening or what to do with himself.

“Take off your clothes Dean,” Cas ordered, his voice so gruff and deep the singer didn’t think twice before he started unbuttoning his jeans, though pausing a second when he unzipped his hoodie, thinking, for the first time that night about those gashed, ugly scars marring his forearms, the other, smaller, less visible ones littering his body too. But the room was dark, far too dark for Dean to even make out the colour of Cas’s eyes, and the knowledge of that, of Cas not being able to see them, alleviated some of the anxiety that had slowly started bubbling up inside him.

_He won’t see them, I can enjoy this, for one fucking night, I can just forget about everything else, nothing else matters besides us right now. Just for tonight._

By the time Dean had made the decision, discarding all his clothes, Cas was back on the bed, slotting himself between Dean’s spread legs once again, his own clothes left behind on the bedroom floor. Fuck, he had missed the chance at seeing all of the older man already.

Before he could lament the loss though, Cas’s mouth was back on the curve of his neck, nibbling and biting, going lower until the singer felt the warm, wet suction of Cas taking one of his nipples into his mouth, instantly sucking hard, and swirling his tongue over the raised, sensitive bud, completely driving Dean out of his fucking mind as he gasped in both shock and ecstasy, bringing his own hands up to curl in those dark strands, holding his head, never wanting him to stop playing his body like a fucking fiddle.

“Cas, please, please,” Dean moaned out, not really knowing what he was asking for, what he needed, but he trusted Cas, he seemed to know what Dean’s body wanted more than he even did apparently.

“I’ve got you sweetheart,” Cas assured, shushing him as he moved his head to pay attention to his other nipple, playing with that one for a while longer as the singer kept up the litany of moans and gasps, knowing his voice would be wrecked by morning, which should probably concern him more than it actually was.

Dean didn’t want Cas to be doing all of the work, tough, he wanted to make the writer feel just as good as he was making him feel. Releasing one of his hands from the tangle of Cas’s hair, he trailed a soft path along Cas’s sides, delighting in the muffled hums that he let out, which only spurred his own arousal as he felt the vibrations against his own sensitive skin.

He paused for a moment when his hand made it to Cas’s chest, playing a while with and delighting in the smattering of dark chest hair he could feel there. It contrasted nicely with Dean’s own skin, which was bare of any real hair along with the other parts of his body since it was hard for him to even sport a five o’ clock shadow at times. It odd that whilst he preferred to keep his own skin clean shaven, _all over,_ he found it ridiculously hot that Cas seemed to be a rather hairy guy, which was no surprise really what with the thick mane of hair and perpetual beard the man had.

Soon he was moving his hand lower again, deliberate in taking it slow, caressing the tense lines of Cas’s muscles, which strained where they were working to keep him hovering just so over the singer. His heart seemed to jump out of his chest when he got to what was definitely Cas’s happy trail, the man’s own ministrations, whilst no less arousing, being forgotten for the moment as his mind zeroed in on a much more important appendage he was dying to explore right then.

He could feel the throb of his heart beat in his throat, knew that if Cas were to move back up to his pulse point he would feel it too, but this was no time to chicken out, not when he was so so close, _literally._ Before he could think more on it, before he even knew what he was doing, his hand had made it to that space between Cas’s thighs, first feeling the change in texture from those sparse, soft strands of hair to the rough, wiry, thicker thatch of hair between the man’s legs, and then, _oh fuck!_

“Fucking hell, you’re so big, Cas,” Dean said in a breathy voice as his hand stroked along the writer’s cock, his forefinger and thumb barely circling the wide girth of him. He never thought himself to be much of a size queen, but in that minute he wanted Cas inside of him more than he ever did. He wanted the man stretching him out, pounding him, and making him take every single inch.

“Shit, Dean,” Castiel moaned out this time, lips unable to continue their ministrations upon the singer’s skin as the heat bloomed in him, sending blood rushing to his head as he jerked his body, fucking into Dean’s hand that had him in a looser hold than he preferred, but still sending those tiny electric pulses shooting through his body, which had him shaking, struggling to stop himself from getting off with Dean’s hand alone.

_Fuck, inside, I need to get inside him right fucking now._

Seemed Castiel’s body was on board with that thought as he skated his hands down to the tops of the singer’s thighs, spreading and lifting them up that much more, encouraging Dean to wrap them around his shoulders instead of his hips.

He had wanted to drag this out, explore and lick and taste every inch of the younger man, but they both wouldn’t make it, not this first time. His searching hands finally found the bottle of lube he had stashed in one of his suite cases, popping the cap and managing to liberally coat his fingers single handed.

“You ready?” Cas whispered to him as Dean felt the slight pressure of a warm and wet finger circling around his asshole, Cas’s other hand trailing lightly along one of his quivering thighs, before cupping and spreading his cheeks open for easier access to that warm, tight space his cock would be fucking in a minute.

All the while the writer’s eyes were solely focused on his face, looking for any sign of discomfort and at the intense, concerned look; Dean couldn’t help smiling up at him, lips red and kiss swollen and soft, his green eyes staring back into the handsome face above his own.

_Fuck, I love you._

It was the last really logical thought he had before he leaned up, pressing a gentle kiss to the man’s mouth before he lied back down, body lax and completely under Cas’s control, responding to his question as he said, “Yeah Cas, ‘m ready.”

That was all it took before he felt the pressure of Cas’s thick finger pressing harder, the digit finally making it passed the tight ring of muscles before sinking as deep as it could. Dean gasped at the foreign intrusion, body tensing up for just a second before it could register how fucking _good_ that burn and stretch actually was.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” Castiel panted in a low rough voice as his finger moved in and out and in and out of the younger man. Not before long adding another finger as he fucked Dean’s body with two of his thick, long fingers, trying to spread as much lube around and in his hole as he could.

The third finger took a little extra work though, Castiel feeling the tensing up of the singer’s muscles as he worked it in along with the other two, Dean’s chest heaving as he fought his body to relax through it.

As if on instinct, Castiel started mouthing at the pale skin of those deliciously attractive inner thighs of Dean’s, which had been caging first his hips and now his head. That seemed to do the trick as Dean threw his head back against the pillow, throat exposed and hands bunching the sheets on either side of him.

It had the effect of Dean’s muscles loosening up as pleasure zinged through him, Cas now three digits deep, working his body over as he scissored him open, teasing the soft, vulnerable skin of his inner thighs between his teeth.

But fuck, Dean needed it harder, at least there, where nobody would see the writer’s marks besides them, a secret only they would have, would know about. He needed Cas to just fucking bite down and leave some type of reminder behind, for Dean to know that this was all real, that Cas wanted him, that he got to be with the man, if only this one time.

_One fucking night, I can have this._

“Do it,” Dean urged, already feeling the rough scratch of Cas’s beard, knowing that would leave some red marks, if only for a little while.

Cas stared down at him, blue eyes intense, but fingers still managing to keep fucking into his hole, not letting Dean forget for a single second that he was going to be balls deep inside him in only a few moments, “Are you sure?”

Dean nodded his head, “Nobody’ll see ‘em down there. Please Cas, just, fuck, _please,_ ” he was too far gone to care about how much he had been pleading with the man tonight, but by the pleasured rumble that Cas made, he didn’t seem to mind how needy Dean was, even seemed to fucking enjoy scattering his brain with pleasure as much as he was.

And then the older man was biting down against his skin at the same time as he drove four of his fingers up into him, both fingers and mouth hard and vicious in their intentions of taking Dean apart.

It was several minutes of Cas’s teeth biting down as hard as he dared, lips soothing over the marks, but the singer knew this time they were there to stay for much longer. His fingers curling inside him as they stretched him as wide as they could, though Dean knew Cas’s cock would still burn on the way in, and he couldn’t fucking wait anymore.

“Cas, come on, need you in me,” Dean knew he wouldn’t last much longer, his own cock hard and leaking, already fired up and ready to explode. It’d been a long while since Dean had bothered finding a discreet enough hook-up, let alone finding the energy to get himself off and it was too much, too much stimulation, too much arousal coursing through him and he was ready to just let go, but fuck, he wanted the man inside him first.

In almost one move Cas had flipped his body around, Dean automatically arching his back, ass up and knees spread wide, grabbing a pillow to place beneath him just as he heard the sound of a condom wrapper being opened.

Then, fucking finally, he felt the blunt press of Cas’s cock at the entrance of his spasming hole, gently pushing in until the head popped in, causing the writer to grunt whilst Dean’s breath became more laboured and heavy at the unrelenting pressure of Cas swiftly seating himself to the hilt before stilling, only then giving him some time to adjust to the wide girth and length impaling him.

But oh, fuck, did it feel good. The stretch and burn and absolute pleasure travelling out through his body, Cas’s weight draping over him as he kept one knee pressed down on the sheets between Dean’s own, whilst he planted the foot of the other just beside Dean’s hip, giving the older man a lot more leverage as he grabbed a hold of the singer’s hips, ready to pound right into him the second the singer gave the go-ahead.

Castiel retrained himself from moving even a muscle as he gave Dean the time he needed to adjust, a feat when each breath Dean took caused his hole to twitch and tighten around his already rock hard cock.

Though the second Dean’s hips started rolling, causing his cock to slip free an inch or two before pushing himself back, hard, he was a goner.

It should’ve been a much softer and slower coming together of their bodies, should’ve been gentle and loving and it probably shouldn’t have been anything like what it was right then. Hard and fast and almost _too_ desperate as Castiel fucked him deep and brutal, taking whatever Dean was willing to give, selfish in his pleasure as he plundered in and out of Dean.

He was chasing that pleasure, chasing those beautiful sounds Dean was making as he himself could only crudely grunt and groan like a man possessed. Chasing Dean’s body as it moved away, only to come right back with as much force as he could manage with his admittedly limited mobility with how Castiel was holding on tightly to his body.

Fuck, it shouldn’t have been anything like this.

But it was, and it felt like fucking bliss. Castiel couldn’t remember the last time sex had made him lose his goddamned mind, if it ever did. Made him batshit crazy with the amount of desire and greed and the need and _fuck it_ , pure, unadulterated, raw _love_ he had for this man. It was there, growing and growing, and growing, almost too much for Castiel to hold back from fucking screaming it out loud so everybody else would know. So _Dean_ would know.

That _something_ , it was love. A feeling that had eluded him for his entire life and here it was, writhing and sobbing out in pleasure beneath him.

It was as if his body couldn’t contain himself anymore, couldn’t contain the tidal wave of feelings that were flooding through his system, demanding to be let out, demanding that Dean see all of him, indulging in the satisfaction of knowing that it was winning over him. That the choice wasn’t his anymore: to keep this a secret, to hide this from Dean, from _himself,_ to pretend that in some important, fundamental way, he had changed, and it was all because of this beautiful, broken green-eyed young man.

And he wasn’t holding back anymore, didn’t _want to,_ and with that thought he moved one of his hands from where they had been holding onto Dean’s hip in a brutal vice, knowing there would definitely be some light bruising there too, and fuck, his cock twitched at the idea. He brought the hand up to the younger man’s head, gently twisting his fingers up in those light locks of his. Lifting his head up, Castiel leaned forward and whispered, “You feel me, Dean?” Breath hot and moist with how ragged his own breathing was getting.

“Cas, Cas, fuck, yeah, so good, you feel so good, fuck right there!” Dean choked out, voice high and rough as Castiel zeroed in on his prostate, nailing it with almost every thrust into him, wanting to see him come, wanting to know that it was _him_ who caused the singer so much pleasure that he couldn’t help himself as he soiled the sheets below him.

“Wish you could’da taken me raw,” Dean whimpered, the words spoken softly, ashamed at the vulgar fantasy. But it caused a sharp spark of arousal shooting through both of them as Castiel muffled his loud, unrestrained groan by mouthing at the side of Dean’s neck, knowing it would’ve been loud enough for the neighbours to hear.

His hips stuttered in their rhythm, and he knew he was dangerously close to the edge, “Wanted to feel my come inside you sweetheart? Feel me fill up this tight ass of yours?” Castiel questioned, words filthy and crude. But it was all it took before Dean let out a long, drawn-out whine as his body stilled, ass tightening around Castiel’s cock, forcing the writer to stop his own hips lest he hurt the man, coming untouched as his release spluttered on the sheets below him.

Castiel soon pulled out, Dean’s body still spasming from the aftershocks of his pleasure. He twisted the singer’s body around, lying him flat on his back instead, mindful of the wet spot next to him. He ripped the condom off of his achingly hard and swollen shaft, discarding it as he knee crawled up the bed, stroking his cock as he positioned himself right by Dean’s slightly parted lips, green eyes staring up at him all the while.

“Gotta settle with your mouth for now,” was all Castiel said before Dean bobbed his head quickly, enthusiastic about getting his mouth fucked even when his body was as lax and over-sensitive as it was.

It didn’t take long for the older man to join Dean though, the moment his cock was guided between those plush, bow-shaped lips, seeing them wrapped around the head, Dean sucking gently and fucking _mewling_ at the taste of him before swallowing more of him down, was enough for the man.

One, two, three thrusts into his mouth and Castiel was crying out, coming in Dean’s mouth, the singer swallowing down every last drop, eyes closed as his own body shook minutely with his spent pleasure.

He pulled out of Dean’s mouth soon after, wincing as the singer still sucked on his over-sensitive cock with every inch that was guided out, the brat actually smiling coyly up at him. He arched a brow at the display of the singer licking his lips as if to catch any stray drops of his come, “Mmm, just as good as I thought you’d taste, baby.”

And just like that, he was back to kissing him, licking his own tongue into Dean’s mouth, feeling a rumble of possessive pride bubbling in his chest as he chased his own flavour.

The writer was concerned with knowing he’d probably never get enough of kissing this man beneath him, never grow tired of hearing his voice, feeling his touch, exploring his taste, being inside him, and just being with him.

Concerned, most of all, with knowing the fact that he didn’t much mind being concerned about these things. Not anymore. Because against his better judgement, against all his efforts of not falling for the singer, he had, and he fell hard.

_God, I love you, Dean._

And then Dean froze beneath him, body clamped up, lips cold and unresponsive against his warm ones, voice stuttering out with a tone that was so fucking brittle and thick it mad the writer’s own heart ache, “Y-you what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter! 
> 
> Mentions of physical child abuse, suicide (by hanging), child witnessing the death of a parent, suicide ideation, attempted suicide and anxiety/panic attacks.
> 
> Most of these are contained within the beginning italicised part, so you can skip that if you wish.


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